Sally Green

forCora Though she lives in a world of Velcro, snaps and zippers, I'm showing my granddaughter how to sew on a button. She's nine, same age I was watching my mother pick my favorite one, shaped like a flower a child might draw, color of sunshine. Her homemaker hands held everything together, needle and red thread lickety-splitting up, over, down, up again attaching the blossom to grass- green cloth:Colors no bee could pass by. Now, before the last tug of thread through the button my granddaughter brought me, I point out the pinch of space—width of a scissor-blade—between it and the fabric, a shaft of stitches with a half-dozen twists of thread around it before tying off.Shank, I tell her, same as Mother named it. It strengthens the bond between button and garment, less friction than ready-mades, fasteners that loosen too soon.Like love, my mother said.Close, but not too close. A snip of thread and my granddaughter's ready to go, fluorescent-pink button back on the nose of her dog-faced school bag, the shank fixing us together in this world my mother could trust only so long as everything was done right, only when she didn't forget to check I was buttoned up proper, buttoned up tight.