Buttons

I am an unusual child for my generation in that I played with buttons as a child. I mean, I REALLY played with buttons. They were to coolest thing I ever saw and I could spend hours with them. Grandma T kept hers in the pantry in a pringles can, and I knew there was going to be a great afternoon when she got up and picked that can out of the pantry. The soaps were on, she would flip between channels and I would sit on the floor playing with my buttons.

My main activities with the buttons involved organizing them in any way I could think:

• fabric, plastic, wood, metal
• two holes, four holes, the little nubbin on the back
• round, square, triangular, three dimensional
• white, brown, grey, red, blue
• smooth, bumpy

At the end of my time playing with them, I would have to put them back in the pringles can. My biggest goal when doing that was to mess up my organization so that next time I went to the buttons, they were a clean slate and I could organize them however I chose.

I would make up stories about the clothes where these buttons came from and the things people did in the clothes. I recognized a big red fabric button that came from my mother's old coat. There were some with glass "jewels" in them, and I KNEW those were Aunt Betty's. Carolyn wore the one that was spherical and bluish green and looked like the world to me. Some were so tiny I could barely pick them up. I figured those must be for babies or dolls.

There were a bunch of plain white or plain brown buttons. I figured those must have been on the dresses of most people "back then." I thought it would be such a bother to have to button up a dress as opposed to just pulling it over your head or zipping it up. They were also an annoyance when washing and ironing, but I thought they were such cool decoration for your clothes that they were probably worth the bother.

I have, in my adult life, been known to buy a shirt simply because it had cool looking buttons. I have also been known to quit a dry cleaners because they bust my buttons (even if they are the ordinary white ones).

Before I moved to Kentucky Grandma asked me to come over so she could give me the buttons I always played with as a child. I was so excited that I could barely wait to get home and pour them out on my mom's dining room table. I couldn't risk losing a single one to the car, so I did wait. I now have them in a pretty jar on top of a dresser in my sewing room. I get them out every now and again when I have a project I'm working on that calls for a button or two. I also collect my own buttons. If the shirt is too small or stained--or too big for that matter--its buttons get whacked off and put into my jar.