Claire, Joan, and the Relative Values of Lives

Claire E., an antiques person and an acquaintance of mine, returned my call and we discussed my sampler and platter.  She invited me to bring them over to her house in Cranberry Creek and I stopped in after lunch.
What a place!  The house itself is very attractive with bright and airy rooms and a lovely screened-in room overlooking woods and a stream.  The bigger attractions, though, are her antiques and collections. She has a lot of early American items--and I don't mean repros--all of them interesting and beautifully displayed.
After admiring my platter, she showed me her collection thereof. Oh, boy, she must have twenty of them, along with matching bowls and smaller plates, all arranged artistically in a wood antique corner cabinet. Claire also collects dolls and showed me a number of them, most from the middle eighteen hundreds, with porcelain heads and segmented limbs.
Claire mentioned that she's active in a doll club and asked if I'd consider giving a talk on the Dionne Quintuplets at one of the meetings.  Of course, I said I'd be glad to, although I have here only a portion of the Dionne artifacts I own; shipped most off to California for Ellen to store.
Another collection of Claire's includes decoys and bird carvings. Her late husband collected the former and Claire herself carves and paints birds. They are quite beautiful and, as with the other items, beautifully arranged.  In addition, there were a number of early paintings on the walls.
I was surprised to hear that Claire is almost ten years older than I am. (I didn't know there was anyone left in the world older than I am.)  She looks and acts considerably younger.  She and her husband had no children and her only sibling is a brother in his seventies who lives in Arizona.  He remained a bachelor, so there are no nieces or nephews, either.
We had a good visit and nice talk.  I mentioned that Jeff, the owner of Red Barn Antiques up in New Egypt, was going to come look at my mirror, and she asked me to get his card.  That prompted me to call him when I got home to remind him.
Later, I was puttering around when I got a phone call from my niece, Joan R.  I don't want to go into our history--we had a "misunderstanding," as the simple-minded euphemism goes--but I was thrilled and grateful to hear what she said, and we are again as close--maybe closer--than ever.
Brother Jim called last evening to thank me for the packet of postcards he had originally sent our mother in 1950. Oh, yes, I know how lucky I am to still have my big brothers.
WIDER:  From my cyber-pal, Jim W., on our esteemed leader's regrettable need to murder:
http://bartlebysfour.blogspot.com/2015/04/theres-lives-and-then-theres-lives.html