I was walking along in some drizzly london January rain. My hands were warm and snug in my new coat pocket, and inside there, in that cosy place, I was playing with one of the shiny buttons that had already fallen off. It was round and smooth as I turned it over in my fingers, and as I was getting to know it, I got thinking about buttons. How I love to collect them, how each one tells a story of where it has come from, what it was made for, and what it will become a part of. How I love seeing them all together in a heap. Different shapes and sizes and textures. I began to think of fabrics, and cottons and thread, and the piles of old buttons I have, waiting to become something.
I went home, and dug them out, popped them in a jar, and dressed them up with a stripey ribbon. For some moments the scene really pleased me. It made me think of how I want to restore old things this year with new buttons, ribbons, flowers, fabrics. But also, use old things to recreate new things. Like big old wooden buttons on new coats. How life can be an interwoven tapestry of old with the new, the new with the old. How each one can bring something to the other. Old memories, new dreams, old ways of doing things, new habits. So I want this year to be better at incorporating the two. Redeeming and restoring the old with the new, and the new with the old.
