Mom

Yesterday I went out in search of buttons for a project Athena's working on.  We haven't been able to find anything like a Michael's or Hobby Lobby over here, so I took to Google and learned there's a shop in Marylebone called The Button Queen.  Sounded promising, so off I went.

To be honest, I probably could've found a shop that wasn't all the way across London, but I wanted to go to this one because the very name made me think of my mom.  My mom loves interesting buttons and the simple charm they add to things.  When I was little one of her creative outlets was sewing buttons onto sweatshirts in beautiful decorative patterns and gorgeous color combinations.  I was always so proud to wear the one she made for me, because no one else in the world had one like it.

This is one of the countless things I cherish about my mom.  She has an innate gift for bringing one-of-a-kind flourishes to ordinary things.  Even grocery lists are works of art when written in her handwriting, a script that dances like ocean waves on the page.  Little mundane chores are brightened by being done with a little song or dance step or a silly voice (or all three, 'cause why not?).  When my siblings and I were little, birthdays were days of delight before they'd even begun; we'd go to sleep the night before knowing that in the morning there would be on our nightstand a stack of hand-written, rhyming clues leading us on a treasure hunt all over the house to find each of our presents.  (A genius move on mom's part, really, because it bought my parents an extra half hour in bed while the kids tiptoed around the house on a treasure hunt.) 

Maybe all these little flourishes aren't necessary...Actually, yes, they are.  I need them now.  I need to know the joy that lies in the beautifully written word, in this age of typed everything.  I need to know that things are still crafted by hand with a specific recipient in mind and despite the million other tasks weighing on the maker.  We need the sweet expressions of love in ordinary things just as much as we need those occasional grand gestures.  We need this persistent knock of beauty on the door of the everyday.  Here's to my beautiful mom, the Button Queen, the source of such radiance.