I Bequeath

#52ancestors
Week 8 Heirloom

I Bequeath . . .

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley (c) 2018

Taylor, I bequeath my class cake plate to you.

You may wonder why your grandauntie would leave you such an ordinary thing as a glass cake plate. It certainly isn’t worth any money. It’s not rare or a collector’s item, but it is an heirloom. It’s one of the few family “treasures” that I inherited and that is why I want to pass it along to you.

You see, there is a story behind this cake plate that makes it special.

Eufaula, Oklahoma in 1940

Once upon a long time ago — back in 1940 to be exact, a pretty, young mother was pushing her baby in a carriage. She was going to visit a friend who lived several blocks away. Her baby was a fat, dark-haired girl.

It was hot and muggy in Eufaula, Oklahoma that early summer day and the mother hurried along to get to her friend’s house so she could have some ice tea, visit   and show off her baby’s new tooth and pretty yellow dress.

She pushed the buggy down the uneven sidewalk by a vacant lot where an old mansion, at least by small-town Oklahoma standards, once stood. There was still some trash in the yard, waiting for the cleanup crew to come in and haul it off.

As she went by, she noticed a piece of glass sticking out of the red mud. She stopped to look at it more carefully. On closer examination, she could tell it was a dish or bowl of some sort. She grabbed the edge and began to work it gently out of the mire. It was much larger than she realized at first. Finally, she retrieved the item — a clear glass plate with a pedestal. It’s a beautiful cake plate thought the young mother who was just setting up housekeeping and did not have many dishes. What a lucky find.

She took one of her baby’s diapers and wrapped it around the cake plate and tucked it into the buggy. Off she went to her friend’s house — eager to show off her new-found treasure.

Later, back at her little house, she washed the cake plate and set it out to admire. “It is just perfect,” she thought. She waited eagerly for her husband to arrive home from work so she could share the day’s adventure and show him the plate.

“Next time I bake a cake, I’ll have a pretty plate on which to put it,” she said. And, so she did. Through the years — a half century in fact — she baked cakes for her husband, her daughters and her sons. Always on their birthdays, plus holidays and other times, the glass cake plate would hold a beautiful cake.

That young mother was my mother — and I was the baby in the buggy the day she found the pretty glass cake plate.

Through all the moves she made — in Oklahoma, Kansas and Washington — she took extra care of this cake plate and it has survived without a chip. It held my birthday cakes, your Grandpa’s and his twin’s (Granduncle Jim) and even your great-grandfather, Frosty Vanderpool’s, last birthday cake on 9 April 1984.

A few years before she died in 1991, my mother asked if I’d like to have the cake plate. Of course, I said yes. There are so many sweet memories wrapped around that little cake plate. This is why I saved it.

Taylor, perhaps someday you will bake cakes for your children’s or your grandchildren’s birthdays and put them on this little glass cake plate. If you do, serve them with lots of love and ice cream.

And, remember me and how much I love you — and the story about this cake plate -- our family heirloom.