Buttons

Yesterday, I was playing on Pinterest before work. It was an attempt to de-stress before I walked into the job that I loathe. There was a couple of pics of buttons that caught my eye. I thought "Hmmm...interesting, but why are these in my feed? I haven't pinned anything crafty in...well, forever." If there had been only a few pics, I'd have let them go. However, the more I scrolled, the more buttons there were. I said "Okay, I hear ya!" and I started a board specifically for buttons.

What this process did was open a vast well of memories. Sitting with my mom at her sewing machine with a needle, thread, and her button box, threading buttons onto the string while she sewed clothes. Going through my grandma's button boxes searching for treasures. For me, every button told a story.

 

Button boxes are things of the past, I think. However, I have a button box from my grandma. In it is a set of buttons from a pair of her mother's shoes, buttons from my mother's childhood dresses, a button from an old military uniform plus buttons from my grandpa's shirts. I also have a button box that belonged to my mom. There are buttons from the many clothes she made over the years. 

See I love the smell of these button boxes. That musty smell that only comes with age. But it is the fact that each button in those boxes tells a story. Even the ones that are still on the cards that my mom had purchased. I wrote my grandma a poem about her button box one year. Yeah, that's how much I love the stories and memories lovingly tucked inside each of these boxes.

A year or so ago, someone very dear to me went to a garage sale. They will claim that they had no idea why they bought me the gift that they did. They just saw it and thought it might be something I'd enjoy. I opened the top of the old Ball jar with the old metal and wax lid and sniffed as deeply as if they were a bouquet of the most exotic flowers. Inside was a bunch of buttons. Wooden ones, metal ones, resin ones, and even some painted ones. They are so beautiful and so special to me.

In an age of underappreciated things and often overlooked items, button boxes, to me, are the treasure troves filled with memories and stories. So whatever the universe was trying to tell me, I heard. 

Buttons, people, are my special obsession. Always have been and seems like it always will be.