A Button in a Tin: Stories Hidden in Small Things

the oldest known button is 5,000 years old it was found in the indus valley a small carved piece of shell last week we considered a single glove on a park bench a modern mystery of a missing partner but a button a button is a different kind of lost thing it doesn't just imply absence it implies a moment of strain a thread that finally gave way this one sits at the bottom of a dusty hinged tin that once held tea it's mother of pearl but the iridescence is faint now like a memory of light it's cool to the touch

four small holes in the center forming a perfect square and on one edge a tiny almost imperceptible chip a flaw a story it's not lost at all you see it was saved it belonged to a child's winter coat a coat the color of a perfect red apple its owner was six years old with knees that were perpetually scuffed this button was the top one the one that fastened right under the chin its job was to keep the wind out and for three winters it did its job perfectly it was there for the building of snowmen with pebble eyes it was there for the first terrifying slide down the big hill at the park it

was there for the walk home hand in a mother's hand as the streetlights flickered on against a purple sky the mother's fingers chapped from the cold would fumble with it every morning and every evening she would unfasten it her touch gentle releasing the small body from its wool armor one day the sleeves were too short the coat was packed away but before it was the mother took her sewing scissors the small silver ones shaped like a stork and she snipped the thread she snipped this one button off not all of them just this one the one that had been closest to his face the one that had heard his breath and felt his shivers she

dropped it into the tea tin with other small sacred things a single baby tooth a lock of blonde hair from his first haircut a collection of moments too small to frame too heavy to throw away years pass decades the tea tin is moved from a shelf to a drawer to a box in the attic the mother is gone the child is a grown man with children of his own and one rainy afternoon a granddaughter bored and exploring finds the tin she pries open the stiff lid inside she finds the strange little collection

the tooth the curl of hair and the button she picks it up she doesn't know about the red coat or the snowy hills or the mother's careful fingers she sees only a pretty pearlescent disc with a tiny chip on the edge to her it has no history which means it can have any history she doesn't put it back she pockets it the next day she takes a needle and some dark blue thread she sews it onto the cuff of her denim jacket it doesn't match any of the other buttons it isn't supposed to it's not for fastening it's for decoration it's a secret she wears on her sleeve the button which

spent forty years in the dark remembering the cold is now out in the sun again it bumps against desktops at school it catches the light in a movie theater it's there when she gets her first kiss and it's there when she's driving with the windows down music blasting it has a new life a second life it carries the ghost of a six year old boy's laughter inside its faded pearl a secret it will never tell and it begins to gather new memories right alongside the old ones a tiny chipped perfect bridge between a life that was and a life that is