VOLUME 2, CHRONICLE 15, SHORTY’S CAKE PAN:
“Though she be but little, she is fierce…” ~~ Shakespeare~~ “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”

This is your paternal great-great-grandmother. Twenty four years ago yesterday, May 17, 2001, we lost her. Also pictured with you, her cake pan. Today, I thought about the woman my granddad called Shorty & the pan that’s mine now & I treasure that pan like the Dutch treasure Vermeer & Rembrandt. I thought about her fierceness as I found myself in an unscheduled Sunday afternoon joust against the Purple Knight from the Alzheimer’s castle down the block & gathered like the pan, another dent, another fold. Shorty came into this world on New Years Eve 1911 as Edna Arizona Ashford. On May 26, 1928 she took a vow & changed her last name to the same one you two & I were born with. It was a name & a vow she kept for 72 years & 356 days until Alzheimers finished its sinister tour de force on her mind & soul. She would have been a perfect player for the “Do Your Job” culture of Bill Belichick & the Patriots. She showed up every day & fiercely answered the call. Her job, the only job she ever had, was running the house. Two children arrived during the Depression. A look at the 1940 census shows a nuclear family of 4 plus her mother-in-law & two  brothers-in-law. She was chief cook, bottle washer & CEO of her nonprofit kitchen. Your Great-granddad told, on numerous occasions, that often there would be someone at the family dinner table that he had never seen before & never saw again. She embraced, fiercely,  that “treat your neighbor as yourself” thing. Those individuals, like the cake pan, were dented & beaten, but they would be filled with something good. She was a wonderful grandmother of three lucky individuals. From first through third grade, that pan held many treats when I got off bus 83 outside her house. She was at her garage door, every day, doing her job, grandmotherly fierce, waiting for me with a smile & some marvelous homemade confection under the lid of that pan & a cold Double Cola in the ancient fridge in the garage. Every Monday through Friday. At Christmas, every year, two $5 bills. I viewed it as a fortune when I was 6 or 7. I viewed it, sadly, as a cynic as a 16 or 17 year old. It wasn’t until I was going through another heirloom, my grandfather’s Bible, that the significance of her gift came into focus in one of those moments Atticus Finch described as “…crawl into someone else’s skin & walk around in it”. Her church tithing record from 1947 was among the notes & momentos between the covers. Every week, she gave the same amount. Every week, doing her job, no grand amount but the same amount. Fierce. Every week trusting in the words found in Malachi, (paraphrased) “bring the whole tithe into the storehouse & I will pour out so much blessing there will not be room to store it”.  2020 & 2022 were highlighted by each of your arrivals. As years get shorter among some long days, I found out an awful truth of adult math in November of 2019, that five construction superintendents don’t divide equally into three construction projects. In 2020 I had to embrace my neighbors feelings more than ever, as everyone seemed to have a mad on over everything. And I had to trust Malachi’s promise of tithing, the percentage stayed the same as previous years, but the amount smaller, the sacrifice greater. Like your great-great-grandmother, I’ve found God fiercely faithful & the blessings too great to store. Like today in church, your mom & dad in front of me & your Jules & aunt & uncle to my right & your hugs in the nursery, even with a mid service phone call that I needed to grab my lance & head to the tiltyard. Like her cake pan, I’ve been dented & beaten but underneath the lid, still resides something fierce, something good, good on smooth roads & those with potholes, good from jobs lost to the job I didn’t know I needed that has evolved into the job God built me for, & one thing is for sure, if any day is gonna claim a win over us, over fiercely doing our job, that day better bring its lunch ’cause it’ll take a while, ‘cause we’ll bring our lunch & we’ll bring dessert too. We’ll bring it in our cake pan…