When we were children two miniature photographs stood on a mantlepiece in the small room where we ate, did our homework and relaxed. One photograph showed my father's grandfather, my grandfather's father. The other showed his wife, Elizabeth. I still have both photographs.
Elizabeth's nephew, Richard Stanislaus, emigrated with his wife to Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. His son Austin enlisted as an ANZAC soldier during the first world war, was hospitalised while in Europe and later visited the home where his great-aunt Elizabeth and her husband had lived until their deaths a few years previously. While he stayed with the cousins who now lived in the family home, he met a girl related to his great-aunt, fell in love, married and brought her back to Australia.
A grand daughter of dashing Austin contacted me last year and we exchanged emails. I was struck by the quality of her writing. Last Sunday she came to visit.
I saw her walking past the kitchen window, went to meet her and found myself gazing at a reincarnation of my great grandmother. When I showed her the photograph she immediately recognised herself in it, and I saw her eyes return, time after time, to the little miniature.
I am a hybrid. At different times people have seen in me my mother, my paternal grandmother and my father's sister. I know I share a love of learning with Elizabeth (and with my Australian cousins), but no-one has ever suggested I bore any physical resemblance to her. At an intellectual level I realise it is possible for someone to have a closer resemblance to her great, great grand aunt than another person who is more directly related, but the idea is so counter-intuitive I never seriously harboured it. That is, until now.
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