What is it about grandmothers and buttons?
Grandma’s Briefs is a lovely blog from America, from a self-described “long-distance grandma navigating the waters of grandparenting”.
Yesterday she wrote a piece called ‘Granny’s Buttons’, in which she described the two tins of buttons she keeps at home:
One is small and kind of boring. It's filled mostly with spare buttons in plastic packages, thrown into the can for safekeeping in the event a garment needs a replacement.
That small, boring can of buttons is mine.
Then there’s a second tin. Less useful, but more valuable:
It's filled to the brim with what looks like buttons, but they're actually treasures. Treasures from my mother-in-law, also known as Granny to most anyone who knows her.
Granny's tin of treasures became mine when she was moved into a nursing home a few years ago.
She outlines her plans for disbursing this inheritance, donating them bit by bit to her daughters and grandchildren, often in the form of wrapped gifts. I think that’s charming.
None of her buttons are of chocolate, far as I can tell, which is a pity.
I’ve been distributing Granny Buttons’ inheritance myself for years, mostly in the form of treat packets to children on the towpath.
But not always children. Once I met a real ‘granny Button’ on the towpath. It was near Loughborough on the Soar, November 2005, and we got chatting. As grannies do. She said her real name is Judith Button, she lives on a canal boat, and she’s a grandmother.
This is the closest I ever got to giving a real Granny Buttons ‘granny buttons’. How sweet.
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