Oh, good, it’s not going to be cold tomorrow, I thought Saturday, when thinking about church clothes for Sunday. I could wear a transitional dress with a jacket I hadn’t worn since last fall. But when I got up Sunday morning, it was almost summer-like outside. A cotton-blend dress that I had would work better. I put it on, glad to have a chance to wear the stylish outfit I liked so much, a brown dress with a brown, three-quarter length jacket covered in big white polka dots with huge brown buttons down the front and on the cuffs of the sleeves.
We got into the car and headed for church. What’s this? I wondered, as I was settling into my seat and saw a strap flapping at my wrist. I tucked it into its loop and reached to button it. The button was gone! Oh, no! It was too late to go back home and change, so I hoped the loop would hold the strap and no one would notice that my cuffs didn’t match.
How long had the button been gone? Placed near the back of the cuff, it would have been hard to notice it missing. As soon as I got a chance today, I started looking for it. Maybe it had dropped onto the closet floor. Searching the floor and under a shoe rack with a flashlight, I noticed several things, but not the button. Here was a pretty top I hadn’t seen all summer slipped off it’s hanger and behind something. Seeing various shoes and hangers on the floor, I knew I had to clean it out. Organizing is my least favorite thing to do, but my husband’s favorite.
“Howard, would you help me with this closet?” I called, since he was home today and reading on the porch. In his own good time, he tackled the chore, getting bogged down in a carton of books stored since we’d moved here. But alas! No button. I looked in my button box and found one that was the right size, but it was blue. I searched the jewelry box and found a pair of buttons, one huge and one small, in a plastic packet that must have come attached to some new garment, but they were gray.
We usually don’t think of a necessary item like a button as a luxury, but I think they used to be considered as such. I remember reading in Tom Sawyer, how Aunt Polly used a needle and thread to fasten Tom’s shirt. And I used to hear my dad talk about when he was a boy, they “tacked” the opening of clothing together with a needle and thread--kind of sewing them into a garment! The Amish don’t always use buttons, instead using snaps or hooks and eyes, or even sewing or using pins as less showy fasteners. (When I was little, I would see my father make a simple lock, called a button, for a shed door--or even one in the old farm house--with a strip of wood nailed to the facing and twisted across the door to hold it secure. “Button that door!” was a common command from him back then.)
Well, buttons are certainly a necessity today, and a fashion ornamentation, as well. I didn’t find mine, but maybe by Spring, which will probably be as soon as I wear the outfit again, I’ll have found it, or at least a suitable replacement. We did fill a bag for charity with several purses, shoes and articles of rarely worn clothing. And, I have a clean closet, so all is not lost. Only the button!
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