Three Best Friends

***If you ever doubted that my life (Lyana’s life that is) was different growing up in Ukraine than yours in the states, look no further. These pictures are a proof of that!:)

Katya, Lyana, Olia! Try to say it as fast as you can-haha. Three times.

I don’t remember my life without these two of my cousins. They were always there, it seems. Katia is two years older then me and Olia. Olia and I are two months apart. In Ukrainian, the word “cousin” kind of translates as “secondary sister”, so basically, we considered ourselves sisters. Katia and Olia are true sisters and I was just squished in the middle-haha.

Our Grandma lived in Dubno, a small town in Ukraine. Our parents were still finishing up grad schools or working, so we spent many months with grandma in Dubno, where she took care of us, her youngest child (still a teenager) and had a full time job. We did go to “sadik”—Soviet-style day care for most of the day, but still managed to spend a lot of time together at home.

Spending at least a month in Dubno during summer was “mandatory” when we were little, even after we moved away to Lviv and Kyiv. We sent each other dozens of letters (we didn’t have a phone till I was ten or so), spent many New Year Eve’s together, took dozens of long train rides in uncomfortable “electrichkas" (slow moving country-side trains with hard bench-like seats) and enjoyed thousands of hours playing outside running all over Dubno (and sometimes catching a bus-haha).

We didn’t know any different and our life seemed so fun and simple.

Here are just a few of the pictures that I had scanned from the albums my mom brought me from Ukraine.

Our famous picture. We always laugh about whose legs those are. I am on the left (I know, I look the smallest, but I am not really), Katia, Olia.

Looks like the same spot but a couple of years later. In Ukraine, many people hang up beautiful rugs on the walls. So that’s my Grandma’s rug behind me. I am on the right.

I love our clothes in this one. That’s me on the left…clearly the third wheel-hahaha. I remember we were told multiple times NOT to jump on the couch. And we still did that.

We always laughed at this picture. Katia is “directing” something as always, Lyana and Olia fighting who gets to be behind the TV. I am not sure about what it was like in the US in 1983-84, but this is the kind of TV that we had growing up. Three channels.

Winters in Ukraine used to be fantastic! Love our hats I am in the middle.

We were dressed up for some family gathering, I remember. All girls had to wear bows like that. I remember having dozens of them…and so many ways to tie them. We had to have our hair in braids every day, except maybe on special occasions we could have our hair down or in a pony tail. If your hair was too short, your mom still managed to somehow tie the bow around tiny pieces of your hair.

New Year’s Eve in Ukraine. That is our own “Did Moroz”—my uncle Serhiy. Yes, he has a beard made of cotton balls…although in Ukraine, I remember we didn’t use to have cotton BALLS, we just had this cotton MESS from which we had to pinch out pieces/balls to use. So that’s that cotton stuff.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas, so New Year’s was our huge holiday. Kids received a small gift. Usually some sweets and mandarin oranges. Looking at Robert’s pictures from his childhood Christmas mornings gives me a new understanding at how different our lives used to be.

And now jumping a bit forward to 1990, my uncle’s wedding. We are ages 8 and 10. I am in the left. My jeans are super cool! They were hard to find, in fact. And apparently my T-shirt was fancy enough to wear to the wedding party (by the way, don’t get me started on the way weddings are celebrated in Ukraine…I am salivating just thinking about the food at our weddings…yum!).

Finally, this is summer of 1991. We got these dressed “made in China”, which were a HUGE new thing in Ukraine. So we decided to go to the professional studio and get our picture taken. Good thing! In a month or so, my hair was cut down to 1 inch because…that’s what you did in Ukraine when you got lice.

Finally, this is the picture taken in Paris, in Oct. 2007—last time we were all together. The whole family (even Robert and I, poor dental students) gathered together for Olia’s wedding.

Our lives have taken such different directions! We live in three different parts of the world, speak different languages at home, cook different food and live very different styles of life. But we are still sisters…forever. 

Ya vas lyublyu!

Lyana