Grandmother's Buttons

My grandmother's buttons were kept in a jar in her spare room full of vintage castaways, tributes to a past once treasured. They held for me a fascination of color, shape, texture. Some were sets; most seemed singles. Sometimes I would dump them onto a surface to explore their forms. One was moss green plastic with bumps and a recessed edge. It had two holes. I liked the way it felt, smooth and cool like the earth. Another had a fabric center and a loop on its back. I found four of these. They reminded me of Elizabethan shoes and high-laced collars. Each button evoked its own sensibility, perhaps held a story. The collection together felt like it transported--maybe to another time or to another way of being.


 
Eventually grandma passed. Mum inherited the button collection. She kept them in the basement, which was packed full of forget-me-nots, could-have-been's, and if-only's. Now mum has passed. I don't know what happened to that collection of buttons, lost in a remote sense of longing.