One Red Button

The place for supplies 

Funny, we all think, how on a pre-snow day the grocery stores always empty out of essential foods – but, to be in JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts, as big and well-stocked as any grocery store, and to see the women there in throngs, buying 12 yards of interlining; or 7 yards of interfacing; or one yard each of 12 patterned fabrics; or enough black and white thread to last till the end of time . . . that is funny.  One woman, her cart full of supplies, said, “Now I’m ready for the snow day tomorrow – watch it not get here!”  She laughed, as did other women nearby who were most likely thinking the same thing and similarly gathering supplies for the arrival of snow.     

I had gone there to get one big red button and some cording for a small project of my own.  I have only recently put my hand to sewing after a 30-year hiatus, and I find it to be much like bread baking in the way it can jog one part of the brain in order to open up the other part of the brain that often gets stuck in non-writing mode.  As I stitch, words fall into place, order becomes apparent, and a pattern emerges!  Anyway . . .

Like in a candy store . . . 

I stood in line nearly 30 minutes for my $12 purchase.  These are not the same faces I saw in the grocery store earlier today, I thought.  No one here was complaining about the long lines or the lack of supplies on the shelves or the understaffed store. These women were happy to have obtained their goods for an anticipated play day.

The woman in front of me looked back at my few meager items which I held in my left hand (other women had carts, real grocery carts, full of sequins and glue and threads and bolts of fabrics and rolls of batting and such) – she looked back at me and said, “Got a coo-pon?”  She might have said, “Got Milk?” as on that television ad – so firmly and surely did she say it to me.

I looked down at the one red button and three one-yard-length cords I held, and said, “No.”  I realized I was the only woman in line without a grocery cart or booklet full of coo-pons.  She didn’t say anything, just proceeded to scroll at her smart phone, then turned back, handed me a paper coo-pon for 40% off one item, and said, “I’ve got this one on my phone, so you can have it . . .”   I was very grateful, calculating I’d use it for the pricey $5 button I held, and that it  would save me $2 or so.  She inched forward in line, saying, “Ever’ little bit helps, right?”

In the parking lot, one woman loaded her car with a cart full of fabrics and supplies – all in her trunk. She looked up as I squeezed by, and gave me some kind of “knowing smile” – it was a little sheepish too, as though admitting the trick of putting bags in the trunk in order to hide it from one's husband.  I’m not sure if that’s what the sheepish smile meant, but I smiled back in a knowing fashion and nodded to her, just as I had gratefully accepted the coo-pon from the other woman.

I needed one perfectly red button

I put my button and cords in the car, and suddenly thought that chocolate chip cookies would be fun to bake on a snowy day, and so I walked up the sidewalk to a grocery store.  I passed by a liquor store on the way and saw throngs of men inside, standing in lines equally long as at the crafts store.  I hovered nearby, pretending to read signs in the window, all the while noting the men walking in with hands in their pockets and heads to the ground, not browsing in the store but going directly to the aisle of their intention – and men walking out, holding a black plastic bag in each arm, heads still down.  There were no bonds or “knowing smiles” amongst them – and I wondered if one of them might open the trunk of his car to find a cache of hidden craft supplies . . .