The old button box smelled musty as I slowly lifted the lid of it. I can't remember if my great grandmother kept it in the old smoke house or in the basement, but either place would have given it the musty smell that it still carried deep inside it.
I do recall many a hot afternoon, going thru the contents of it like it was a pirates treasure chest. Shoving my tiny fingers into the depths of the button box and feeling the cool orbs, and the smooth flat slivers that looked like mother of pearl, and some that shined like diamonds, and rubies, I pretended to be Blackbeard the pirate, and I had just scored a huge haul off of a Spanish Galleon headed for the new world.
I squinted in the fading light of a fall afternoon, trying to make out the shapes and colors of the vintage buttons that lay still and lifeless in the bottom of grandmas button box for so many years. My fingers now, not so tiny reached down inside to feel the smoothness of the old gems.
I marveled that they still looked the same after all these years, and my mind stirred up images of my grandmother cutting them off of old garments that had seen better days.
She had lived thru many hard times, and even something as small as a button needed to be saved as you never knew if it might be needed one day.
I placed some of the buttons into an old greenish blue ball jar, and put them up on a shelf. Then gently closed the lid on the button box and placed it in my closet.
Now I can look up and see some of the buttons in the old jar, without disturbing the others in their time capsule from the past, and reflect on the beauty of an item that is so simple, but necessary even in today's fast paced society.
I wonder what my grandmother would think of our world today? She would probably still cut buttons off of old clothing to save " Just in case" and most likely she would look at me and say, button, button who's got the button!
