The Button

When I was little, my Momma had a big metal tin filled with all kinds of buttons, every shape, size, and color you could imagine. She was a seamstress, and to me, her supplies were magical. She had this red tomato-shaped wrist pin cushion, straight pins sticking out in every direction. Her silver scissors were sacred, angled just right for cutting yards of fabric, and absolutely off-limits to us kids. “Don’t you dare use my sewing scissors for paper,” she’d say.

She had boxes of patterns, each one folded like fragile treasure maps on the thinnest tissue paper. The envelopes showed models in everything from cowboy shirts to elegant dresses. She’d lay out the pattern on the chosen fabric with precision, cutting carefully, always warning as we tried to help her cut patterns, “Don’t cut off those black arrows!” I did once. Okay, maybe twice. She stopped asking me to help after that.

Every scrap of fabric was saved, “just in case.” I’d take them and make clothes for my Barbie dolls, tying little pieces around them like designer dresses. It made me feel like a little seamstress too.

But what I remember most was that tin of buttons.

The round tin itself was faded blue-gray with a lid that squeaked when you pulled it off. Inside was a kaleidoscope of color and texture, fire engine red buttons, creamy whites, deep forest greens, and rich browns that looked like polished wood. Some were shaped like daisies or tiny roses, others were smooth and pearly, like something you’d see on a church dress. A few still had thread dangling from the holes, little ghosts from shirts long gone. I’d run my fingers through them like treasure, listening to the soft click of plastic and metal falling through my hands. It was better than marbles, better than beads, this was real magic.

One day, I found a button that caught my breath, about the size of a quarter, swirled with gold and cream, shiny like a bowling ball, with four tiny holes in the center. I asked Momma if I could have it. She barely looked up from the leather jacket she was struggling to sew for some motorcycle guy and said, “Sure, baby.”

I slipped that button into my pocket, and from that day on, I took it everywhere.

It became my comfort, my anchor, when kids were cruel or when I was afraid. I’d rub my thumb across the smooth surface, tracing the holes with my fingers until I fell asleep.

When I ran away to Florida with a boy, I packed almost nothing. But I took my button.

When that boy, the father of my baby, put me and our child on a bus back to Texas, said he didn’t love us, didn’t want us… I clutched that button the whole ride home.

Years later, when I met Tim, the man my son and I would both fall in love with, that button was in my pocket on our first date. I kept it close through our engagement, our wedding, and every moment when I needed courage to show up and belong.

When we lost our baby during pregnancy, that button was in my pocket as the doctor delivered the news. It soaked up so many tears. Tears of grief. Tears of joy when our daughter Kelsey was born. Tears of pride when Kyle became a man and moved away. Tears of bittersweetness as Kelsey graduated high school, then college.

One day, during a move, I couldn’t find it anywhere.

I tore through boxes. Searched drawers. Cried. And then, weeks later, while unpacking yet another box, I found it in the corner under some books. That little swirl of gold and cream. I wept like I’d found a missing part of myself.

By then, Momma and I had finally found peace with each other. I had cared for her during the last decade of her life.

And then she was gone.

No matter the journey, whether complicated or close, losing your mother leaves a quiet, aching hollow in your heart. No one had ever believed in me more fiercely than she did, even if she hadn’t always known how to show it. The seamstress. The mother of seven. The woman who, by the end of her life, I forgave, and cared for with the kind of love I had once needed from her.

On the day of her funeral, I stood over her casket and pressed the button into her hand.

It had walked beside me through heartache, hope, and healing, but it was never just a button.

It was her.

All the fierce love she had for her children, even when her own wounds got in the way.
All the comfort she couldn’t speak out loud.
It was her love, stitched into something small enough for me to hold when the world felt too big.

She had loved me the best way she knew how.

And now, I was sending that love back to her, tucked gently into her hand.

No one else ever knew that button existed and what it meant to me.

It had been my little secret… until now.

I believe one day she’ll give it back.

That gold and white, shiny, swirling button…
with four tiny holes,
and a whole life of stories sewn into every one!