Grandma’s Button

By evening Mirko was already in his pyjamas. Only one button was missing from the pyjamas, right in the middle, so they kept coming undone.

"Come here, you," called Grandma, and she put her box on the table.

Mirko lifted the lid. Clink-a-clink! The buttons stirred like little fish. White as little teeth. Red as rowan berries. Tiny as poppy seeds.

And at the very bottom lay one blue one. Big and round, with four little holes. On one side it had a chip, as if somebody had taken a bite of it.

"Grandma, did a mouse nibble this?"

"We don’t have any mice," said Grandma. "And this button is older than I am."

"Older than you?" Mirko’s mouth fell open.

"Yes. Once upon a time it was on your great-grandfather’s coat. The coat was dark and heavy. Your great-grandfather wore it in winter: crunch-crunch through the snow. And the button held his collar closed, so the wind couldn’t blow down his neck."

Mirko held the button up to the lamp and looked through the holes. The light shone in them like four tiny stars.

"And then?"

"Then the coat wore out. But I put the button away. When your mum was little, I sewed it onto her blue dress. She danced in it at the party at her kindergarten. She twirled, whirr, and the button twirled right along with her."

"But where does the chip come from?"

Grandma thought and thought.

"I don’t know," she said. "Nobody remembers that anymore."

Mirko rubbed the chip with his finger. It was smooth, as if it had been stroked for a very, very long time.

"Grandma, whose button is it now?"

"Now," said Grandma, taking out a needle and blue thread, "now it’s yours."

They sewed it on together. Grandma sewed, and Mirko held the button with his little finger and counted:

"One, through the hole. Two, back again. One, through the hole. Two, back again."

Just then Mum looked in at the door.

"Oh!" she said. "My blue button!"

"It was on Great-Grandpa’s coat," Mirko explained. "And on your dress. And nobody remembers the chip."

Mum bent down, touched the chip, and laughed.

"I remember. I bit it! Before the kindergarten party. I was so scared to dance that I put the button between my teeth, chomp, and just stood there."

"You?" Grandma clapped her hands. "And you never told me!"

"And then the music started, and I wasn’t scared anymore," Mum smiled. "I danced right to the end."

Mirko laughed so hard that the new button on his pyjamas gave a little jump.

The button remembered the snow and Great-Grandpa. It remembered Mum and the music. But about Mirko it didn’t know anything yet.

Mirko stroked it and began to wonder: what story will I give it?

And what thing in your family remembers your stories?