Echoes.

When I was little, I spent a good majority of my time with my grandmother.
Granny, as we called her, was a woman full of spit and fire – she could nag the ears off corn, but she had a heart of gold.
My dad would go work with my grandfather out in the hay field – bailing hay was always good for some extra funding, and in the dual worlds of carpentry and mechanics that my dad occupied, extra money was important.

I was endlessly fascinated with my grandparents. 
They could make toys and fun out of the simplest of things.
Hours I spent doing puzzles and playing the modern game of Yahtzee with my Granny…
And hours I spent playing with string and simple things that she knew how to put together from her childhood.

The button toy, for instance.  I think it’s technically called the buzzsaw, but between that and the whimmydiddle, I have chosen the alternate names of button toy and the stick toy. 
Toys that have been around for as long as she could remember… a simple button and a string.

She had a bowl of buttons – heavens I wish I knew where they were now. 
I have a feeling that somewhere along  the way I inherited a lot of them, but I wasn’t smart enough to know then how cherished those little ancient buttons would be now if I were to see them.
But some of them were buttons she’d gathered along the way – she was an embroider… she loved to sew.
And some of them were from family members… some her mother’s…
I remember being taken with the buttons shaped like delicate flowers… or being a young girl, the buttons with ‘sparkles’ on them – gemstones placed here and there.

She would tell me about them – where they came from.
She had an amazing memory and could list the history of almost every button in the collection.

I miss that. 
Sometimes it’s the simplest of things that you remember and long for.
And I miss her and her buttons today.  Very much.