A tale of two china cabinets

This is my first china cabinet.

It was my grandma's and sat in her dining room:


I don't remember going with her to buy it, but I probably did. I know the store it came from. I know that it was purchased alone, not as part of a set. I do remember it being moved into her dining room in 1978, when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I remember her telling everyone that she intended this china cabinet to be mine one day.

It sat in the same spot in her house until I was 29 years old, when my boy friend moved it into my apartment, then 7 years later, the same man, my husband, moved it into his house. Now it has moved again. Now it sits in my dining room in my first house.

When I was a kid, my grandma kept her blue and white china (now lost) in the cabinet. Now, it holds my Spode Blue Italian wedding china, and a few plates and a tea set that was hers.

This is my second china cabinet.

It belonged to a woman I will never meet, my husband's Aunt Mary:



Aunt Mary was 15 years or more older than her brother, my father-in-law. She married young and then divorced, never had children. My father-in-law took care of her in the last years of her life, and he inherited everything that she owned, including this china cabinet that now sits in my kitchen.

I don't know where it was purchased or when. I don't know who she had intended it would go to. I don't know what kind of china she kept in it. My husband only remembers her keeping place mats in its drawers. But it now hold another set of old blue and white china, blue onion pattern.

Two different women with two different china cabinets.

But these two women had a lot in common.

Most importantly, their lives revolved around their church. I know this about my grandma because I watched her live it. I watched her host women's prayer meetings at home. I watched her read her bible by the window. Many people have told me how she was a leader in the early women's groups at Church. I know this about Aunt Mary because I have found Sunday School teaching material, bible studies and church bulletins in that china cabinet.

I know that each woman spend their life serving at Church.

I wonder what these women would think today about their cabinets in my new house, and if they knew that I think about each of them as I pass their respective china cabinets.

They are probably high-fiving each other in heaven now.