It seems a bit odd to be a writing Canadian on an American website about the state of the people I have come to know through the Society.  However, their unequal lives have thrown me off my usual humour.  I had to stand back and stop writing them for awhile to clear my own perspective of their divergent lives.

My original web meanderings brought me to quite an astutely old British name who proved to be suffering at subsistence level.  Suffering crackling static in the winter and eating only vegetables which abounds in her breadbasket valley at rock bottom prices to make space for to-morrow's harvest.  

The other is a person who is amongst the privileged of America who owns several homes in various parts of the land and whose family tradition is proudly military.  Her name is also British and her seemingly carefree way of life took me quite by surprise as she sought personal happiness and acquired a style of living quite foreign to the other woman.  

The other woman's budget of a superficially happy-go-lucky(?) Southern Po'r White who felt privileged to have a bursary/scholarship given on the grounds of race and colour will never be able to realize the life of the other woman even in a dream.  She is your hardworking, disillusioned bravado of the trained-to-work-and-toil underling never to move forward and upward to the heights of personal wealth and comfort in the true sense of personal American liberty.

They both threw me off course considerably from getting a "feel" of each other when they came at me in black letters on white paper.  They mutually made me feel the one person was almost frivolous and the other so basic and banal that I couldn't reconcile the effect within myself.  I had to stand apart from them for awhile but actually did choose on the grounds of literary principle to choose the uplifted and uplifting.  

Here, up north of the border, I remain safely ensconced in the almost set apart position in the wealthiest of the civil service commissions enjoying the privileges never to be experienced by the poor elsewhere beyond the terminology "set apart".  It will be for her to excruciate and endure and to fall in with the wretched sufferers to whom she administers at almost the lowest remuneration of qualified workers.  

'Though I might never travel here and there to make the weather suit my clothes, I am free.  I am Canadian and comfortably privileged to be me.  Hopefully, someday, we shall all be happy.  God bless.

It seems the big day came and Mom did things her way instead of mine.  That is to let me ride the truck caboose with the movers.  Well, the man "Denis" finally appeared and uttered, "I am not available to you the second time but, right now I have a cabinet here for you.  May we bring it in?"  

Ah, yes, everything was delivered and set up and I didn't recognize the cabinet.  Nevertheless, I sent the move co-ordinator and friend of Mom's an extra large bouquet of tulips at her anitque shop bearing her name.

Now on recalling a couple of details of what I remember of Mother's china cabinet, I see this one I have with all my tableware stashed away in, is not hers or mine.  "Denis" made a mistake, or, did he?  The cabinet he brought me was old, sunburnt, warped and damaged and repaired in four places.  However, it was the same brand as Mom's cabinet and burnt into the wood inside the top drawer.

As I recall now that I am not het up from moving all my own furniture prior to the arrival of the cabinet, I see the reversible lattice to plain wood panels on the outer two doors are not there, and, the middle has two doors enclosing drawers.  I don't recall Mom's cabinet having doors to open before opening the drawers.  I also don't think Mom's cabinet had awkward flatware slots built in as this one does.  I certainly don't recall four lights behind four glass doors either.

Now, I made the mistake of accepting it thinking nothing and that the colour just seemed darker in this room.  Also, I am not always over at Mother's taking in details of new things she has bought after I left home to be that observant about something that was just there.

Oh, well, it's Good Friday now and I'm going to have to wait until a week day except the telephone messages left for Mom's dear antique dealer friend and Mother herself.  "Denis", by the way, is not listed under his impressive business name that he gave either. Did someone bribe him to exchange the newer and better cabinet for this dried up stick of furniture? Did he exchange it to sell for more money than this one?  Is he a crook or not?  We shall see in the next episode of The China Cabinets.  

God keep all my friends and associates safe so this doesn't happen to them.  God bless and good night for now.