The Circles of Life

Sally blew the dust off the old, leatherbound bible. The dust motes drifted down in the shafting afternoon sunlight. She blew her nose and wiped away a tear. These bits and pieces were all that were left of her parent's long lives. Their sixty-seven years of marriage and four children. Their triumphs and tragedies, and there had been many of those.

There were her Mom's 'precious things' as she had called them. Her gifts from her children at various stages of her life. She had been such a sentimentalist, Sally mused. There was her little, leather handbag that Sally had personally shopped for post-Christmas one year. That had been a challenge. There was nothing much left in the shops after the festive season and her Mom had given her specific requirements for this little bag.

Flicking open the hundred-year-old bible, it had been passed down from one generation to the next, she idly paged through its fine paper pages. In the middle was a list of her ancestor's names. She recognized some of them, but many were just names on a page. After so many years not much was left of a life she thought. Just the sentimental, important, much-loved treasures.

Popping out for some bread later, shopping bag slung carelessly over her shoulder, she ran into a very old friend, Joy, from her Harare days. They were both so surprised to come across each other quite unexpectedly that it took a while to orientate themselves. Joy was long divorced, having made a bad marriage as a war bride in the old days. She was very happily single.

They agreed to meet for coffee after they had done their respective shopping.

"I'm over here!" Joy trilled, rather unnecessarily, in the cozy, little coffee shop.

You could hardly miss her, Sally thought. Jangling with bright beads and crystals and in a Morrocan-inspired Kaftan, she stood out. She was an alternate kind of person, into reiki, homeopathy and healing. Her grey hair tumbled about her untidily. Her bright blue eyes took in everything.

Sally wondered if she had aged as well as Joy. Maybe all those alternate therapy practices had something to do with the youthful look.

"So, how have you been?" Joy asked enthusiastically. "I was so amazed to run into you here, out of the blue."

"Likewise," Sally replied.

"I hardly feel you have changed a bit," Joy said, "but the hair color had me fooled."

"Well, nature needs a little help along the way," Sally laughed.

She had always felt such a comfortable bond with Joy,

Nothing she could really put her finger on. But it was lovely to run into each other like this. They agreed to meet up the following week for dinner at a local restaurant, there was a lot to catch up on.

The week passed by in the usual blur of activity. Sally taught art to visually impaired students at the local technikon. She loved it and they thrived on it. When she had the time she went back to the clutter of sorting out her parent's stuff.

But at the back of her mind, there was a niggly little thought. She went on to a genealogy website and researched some of the names in her family bible. These websites were amazing, she thought. They made it all so easy. Every now and again she received an email: ' We have found your eight great-grandmother.'

She knew about Sarah, the young bride, whose bible it had been. This had been a wedding gift from a 'James'. It was beautifully inscribed on the frontispiece. What was he to Sarah? Had they been more than friends before the dashing sea captain stopped by her mother's boarding house and whisked her off to America? And why was there a baby with the same surname as James? Was it their baby? It was all lost in the mists of time.

When Joy and Sally met again she asked Joy if she had had a 'Samuel Kewley" in her family tree.

"Yes, I don't know the surname but my parents did mention a Samuel way back in our family tree." she said surprised.

"Why?" she asked

"Well, I have to admit that I feel somewhere along the way we could be related," Joy felt a bit foolish, " I feel we share something profound."

"Maybe our ancestors were witches, burned at the stake!", Joy laughed.

Sally could see that her friend wasn't taking this as seriously as she did.

"Well I feel I must find out," she said.

"You know my family were original Settlers in this country," said Joy, "way back, but they left to go farm tobacco in the then Rhodesia."

"But you came back!" said Sally.

"Well, things changed for me when I got divorced and I wanted to live near my family," she said.

Sally suddenly remembered that she had some old sepia photographs stashed away in the attic. Her Dad had dismissively waved his hands at the group photograph saying:

"Those are the Travers," as if they had no importance whatsoever in their lives.

But Sally knew that the sea captain had died and Sarah had remarried a man a bit younger than herself and had two boys and two girls. She dug the photo out that afternoon. Yes, there they were. The men lined up at the back and the women sitting down at the front surrounded by boys in sailor suits and girls in white pinafores, straw hats upon their heads. The two older ladies wore black widows dresses and one had a cat on her lap.

They were the missing link to Joy's ancestors. Of that, Sally felt certain. But how? She decided to do some research on Samuel Kewley. Her grandmother had always referred to Granny Kewley when she was alive. She had told the young Sally that they were from Cornwall and when the tin mines started to run out they came out to the colonies and became photographers and wagon makers out in the Winelands.

All this intrigued Sally. She trolled the internet incessantly day and night.

"Do you have any dates for Samuels life?" she asked Joy over the telephone.

"Only the day he died," came back.

"I will take that," she said.

It proved to be the missing link. The computer connected the dots. The two friends' ancestors had been cousins. Sarah and Samuel were second cousins from Cornwall. That made Sally and Joy third or fourth cousins. At last, the puzzle pieces slid into place. It accounted for why their shared ancestry drew them together and their lives crossed. It explained why she felt so at home in Joy's company. After that they met up for Christmas and Easter and many happy occasions with extended family.

There was a shared heritage here. DNA doesn't lie. And suddenly, Joy became not just a friend, but family. True life really was stranger than fiction!