A New Home for THE CAKE PLATE--and a pair of old brown shoes

Transfer of  the early 1940's-era cake plate to  my niece

It took a funeral in the western suburbs of Chicago to finally provide an opportunity to hand over my mother's old cake plate and matching water pitcher to my niece that lives in that area. She was able to join us at the memorial service for my 93-year-old father-in-law this past week. I had inelegantly shoved the 70-year-old pieces of Fostoria glassware into two brown Meijer bags and transferred them from my trunk to her vehicle in the church parking lot just before the service.

I have not made much progress of late with getting rid of my stuff, and was happy to take this baby step towards clearing my clutter. I think I have used the cake plate once in the thirty-some years since I took possession of it from my mother. The time has come to pass it on.

I blogged about it--with photos through the years--in January of 2010, proclaiming that I planned to never eat cake again. As I write this, I am still tasting the crumbs from a piece of chocolate cake from the funeral luncheon--I took home some leftovers. So much for my resolve to let THEM eat cake. But I promised the cake plate to my niece and now it is finally in its new home. She will make a birthday cake for her father (my oldest brother and the first to be photographed with a birthday cake on the cake plate), elevated to new heights on the pedestal, documenting it for the next generation. It would be great if the cake plate lasted for at least 93 years--and I might still be around to find out if it does!

I was a little worried that we would need to take back a few things after the funeral (more stuff), but for now, all we carried home (besides the left-over cake), is a pair of old brown Florsheim loafers, size 14D, which my husband really liked (but which his father liked even more, about ten years ago). My husband reclaimed them from his father's closet as we packed up following the funeral. We'll have to see if they have any more life in them--after I brush off all the dust and clean up the spots of spilled food. They may have molded too well to his father's rather exceptional 14A feet, and have very little sole left...

But yet...a soul of an everlasting kind has passed on and through the doors of a permanent home--to a heavenly mansion, prepared and promised by God to all his earthly children.

As I part ways with my mother's cake plate and recall all the beautiful birthday cakes she lovingly baked, and as I reflect on the pair of old brown shoes in which my father-in-law faithfully (if slowly) walked as a servant of the Lord for the last ten years of his life, I am reminded once again of the brevity of our existence here on earth and the poignancy of the words on that old plaque that hung on one side of an arch in my childhood home:

Only one life, 'twill soon be past 

Only what's done for Christ will last.

Wearing those favorite brown loafers on our last visit, 10-23-11