Last week the Prayer Shawl Group I knit with surprised one of our members with a celebration of her 90th birthday. The theme was an afternoon tea, complete with fine china and finger sandwiches. My contribution was a plate of chicken salad sandwiches carefully placed on my Grandma Farner’s crystal cake plate.
It’s a pretty plate of molded glass. I have no idea how old it is but I do know that usually, when there was a cake at Grandma’s house, it sat on that plate. That is where its value lies for me.
Since I chose the plate from among Grandma’s kitchen stuff following her death, it has become my “go to” plate for cakes, cookies and any number of things I take to pot lucks, funerals, anniversaries and meetings. Each time I take it out of the cupboard, I wonder just how many birthday cakes has it held? How many times has it made public appearances? How many different church halls has it seen? It has been an ecumenical plate, that’s for certain!
I guess by keeping my grandma’s plate in active service, I keep a part of her alive in me. And I hope that at some point, after I’ve passed on, that someone else, in my family or not, will continue to employ this pretty cake plate.