Buttons

I love little buttons and have collected all sizes from garage sales, good will stores, and antique shops.  I have put them in jars and have used them on collages, knitting projects or quilts.  Wooden, pearly, big or small, I simply love them all.

As a wee child, I would leave our apartment and go down to visit my  grandmother in her apartment.  She was from Sweden and did not speak any English.  She immigrated from Sweden to Springfield, Illinois, where she became a domestic for a large family.  It was in Springfield she met my grandfather, a train engineer.  He, too, was from Sweden and although unrelated, they had the same last name of Carlson.

My grandfather died when I was a baby, and by the time I formed a relationship with my grandmother, she was bedridden. Her bed was near a window and she would watch me play.  This very room would later become my own bedroom.  She would tap on the window, beckoning me to come in from play.  She would take my Dale Evans gun belt and make stitches in the fleecy holster.  As I kissed her cheek,  impatiently waiting to flee, she would place a button in my little hand.  I would swiftly run out the back door, throwing the worthless buttons into the alleyway behind the apartment building.

It wasn’t until years later something triggered the memory of the buttons and my long deceased Swedish grandmother.  It was then I began to create my collection of buttons.  A few more years passed before  I asked my older sister if she too had been given buttons.  ”Buttons,” she asked.  ”Those were not buttons, they were Swedish coins!”