Every year at Thanksgiving, my mother hauls out the old Spode dinnerware. You may be familiar with the stuffy old English line of creamy white Christmas tree-emblazoned dishes. (And saucers, and tea cups, and glassware, and serving platters, and candy dishes, and soufflée pots and carving knives — she collects it all!) This past year, one of my mother’s friends from work gave her a few Spode items from her own deceased mother’s collection (this woman’s newly-married neice rejected the Spode, saying it was too “farty”). As she was warming up the apple pie, my mother asked my father to bring up the teapot — one of the newly attained pieces — from the basement. On Thanksgiving, the regular teapot won’t do. Dad emerged from the basement with a dazed look on his face.

“Janet,” he asked my mom, peering into the belly of the teapot, still in its box. “Was there anything you wanted to tell me about this teapot?”

Puzzled, my mother said no. That’s when my dad reached into the teapot and pulled out $822 in cash.

See, I could live for a good few months on $822, outside of my rent. I’d never seen that much cash in one place in my life, and neither had my father. “This has never happened to me before,” he said. My brothers and I tried to convince my mom to keep the money (and then distribute it among the three of us), but she took the high road and called her friend. Apparently, this woman’s mother had repeatedly asked her to “bring me my money” as she neared the end of her life. My mom’s friend was confused, since there didn’t seem to be any money in her mother’s bank accounts. The old woman had stashed it all in a teapot.

Of course, my mother’s friend was pleasantly surprised at the news, and my mom pretty much guaranteed her admittance into that whole Heaven thing she believes in. Meanwhile, the rest of the family grumbled about our perceived loss.

My father summed it up best as he tucked the wad of fifty dollar bills into his pocket for safekeeping: “Too bad we didn’t get this thing at a garage sale.”