What if our in-laws had met as toddlers?  Vitaly always had a taste for adventure -- ever since the Soviet Union granted him permission to visit Germany on official business. His wife, though, was often too timid to go anywhere without him. Yet it is Lyuba who makes their home so homey upon his every return.

In this fine art photomontage, Lyuba holds a signpost that points in every which direction. In her hair is a Russian parachutist's scarf tied into a bow. A passport is just under her heel. In the swing, it is truly uncanny how she fits him like a glove.

Anatole, Vitaly's son, recounts the extraordinary thing that happened when they did, indeed, meet as toddlers:

"Lyuba was three years old and Vitaly was nine. According to my father’s mother, Lyuba supposedly climbed into Vitaly’s lap and said “I’m going to marry you.”  Nineteen years later just as the war was ending, my father and his mother were invited to visit a friend from their hometown Veliki Luki who now lived in Moscow. Lyuba was there. 

Needless to say, my father got very enthusiastic. He started courting her right away … writing her poems and letters, very romantic ones."

Dear Lya-lya,  We’re 650 kilometers apart. I think about the comfy nook where you are sitting right now, and my heart is warming, as if a warm beam has hit me from faraway Leningrad. Anything I do is now from the point of view of its relationship to your arrival. There’s nothing of significance here, but little things fill every day. Today is Sunday. I was going to do a lot of things but it’s already midnight and I haven’t done much at all.   

-          Vitaly Josefich Gershman to Lyuba Bensionovna Luria