So many years had passed since she had last seen “the tin”. When had it even last been opened? The old shortbread tin was beginning to show its age. The tartan sides and border on the lid were faded. The image of snowcapped Scottish mountains on the lid was growing faint with age, almost as though a veil of mist was hanging over their peaks. The tin was older than she was. In fact, it might even be older than her mother.
Holding it in her hands, memories of playing with it as a little girl came rushing back. She had spent many hours sorting through the contents, plaguing her gran to tell her the stories that went with them. Her gran had happily gone wandering down memory lane as she reminisced about where each item had come from.
When she had been a child, the tin had seemed huge and heavy. Now, as she held it in her hands, it was the weight of the memories within that she felt.
Taking great care, she eased off the lid. As she glimpsed inside it, everything looked exactly the same as it had done over forty years before.
The tin was filled with buttons.
There were buttons in all shapes and sizes; there were buttons of every colour.
Lost in her memories, she ran her fingers through the buttons.
She spotted the large dark green buttons that had belonged to her grandfather’s army coat from during the war. There were small round pearl buttons from one of her mother’s summer cardigans from the 1950’s. Big round purple buttons caught her eye. Those came from the wool coat her aunt had bought with her first wage packet. She could see some bone toggles that had been snipped from her father’s duffel coat. One still had its leather loop attached. Several small pearly white buttons with a star in the centre made her smile. They were from her own handknitted baby cardigans. In one of the corners, she saw four or five grey buttons clustered together that had come from one of her primary school cardigans.
Reaching into her jeans pocket, she pulled out four navy blue buttons about the size of a two pence piece. With a wistful smile, she added the buttons from her gran’s favourite cardigan to the tin.
Her whole family history could be told using the buttons from the tin. In her hands, she held several lifetimes of memories. If only those buttons could talk. The tales they would tell!
She was now the custodian of “the tin”. Silently, she promised her gran that she would keep up the family tradition and add her buttons and her children’s buttons to the tin. In time, the tin would pass down to the next generation but for now it was hers to cherish.
A teardrop fell, landing on a red button in the heart of the tin.
Coral McCallum 