Great grandpa Pyotr and great grandma Alexandra grew up, met and got married in the small township of Uryupinsk, known for its Cossack culture, in the heart of provincial Russia. He was not only a Cossack, but also a talented horse healer – a craft priceless in this land of horse-riders, said to trace their lineage all the way to Mongolia’s Golden Horde. She was raising their 3 children when the 1917 revolution erupted. Pyotr didn’t want anything to do with neither the royalist White Army, nor the Bolshevik Reds, but his skills were way too valuable for either side’s elite cavalry. When the Whites came and took him away, he told her: the tides will change again, if the Reds come, they will kill you and the kids because of me; you’ll have to marry a Red to stay alive. When two months later an unknown Cossack delivered to her Pyotr’s hat and his familial sword, she knew he was gone. Alexandra didn’t have time to grieve her husband like a true Cossack woman should. The Reds came a week later. She followed her husband’s word and married a Red, saving her whole family and surviving the bloodiest event in the history of Russia to date.

Her grandson, my Dad, was recently awarded an honorary Cossack military rank because of Pyotr’s lineage. They gave him a sword handmade in Uryupinsk, like the one Pyotr had. When I learned to ride the unruly horses in Mongolia, it was my own homage to great grandfather Pyotr and his fearless Alexandra, her Mongolian DNA evident on her face.

On the days when I think my life is “tough”, I look at this photo and can almost hear Pyotr telling me to buck up, Alexandra just giving me that look of hers, and I pull myself together real fast.