remember

Mom do you remember when you used to take Bex and I to Len's Mill Store? This was before Kim was born so I would have been under 7 (we didn't seem to make it there as much after Kim came because that's when you started having problems with your heart and getting sick all the time). Do you remember how we used to go after Church and hunt for fabric and buttons? I do.

Last night I remembered something I had forgotten for a long time. I remembered how it felt to step through those massive iron doors into the magical warehouse of fabric. I remember the fabric lining the walls in big, over-sized tubes, one on top of the other. The lighting in the warehouse was terrible so the corners of the store were always recessed in shadow. It appeared, to my little eyes, that the warehouse stretched on and on, row after row of fabric, into a vast nothingness.

I remember you walking between the rows, fingering fabric, carefully choosing the prettiest patterns of the best price to make Easter dresses for Bex and myself. We quickly got bored and played hide and seek between the rolling racks and around the stacks and bins of fabric bits. I remember trying to always keep you in sight but sometimes losing you and feeling afraid that I would never find you again in the warehouse; afraid that somehow you might leave for home without me. Wouldn't notice that I was missing....

Mostly I remember how I felt when you asked us to help you sort through the button bins. I remember feeling special that my opinion on buttons mattered to you. I remember the feel of plunging my hands into hundreds of thousands of buttons and the clinking, chinking noise they made as I wove my arms through them. The coolness of the buttons on my hands and arms. I remember feeling pride when I helped you find buttons that matched, enough to complete a set for the dresses you would sew (at night, while we were dreaming in bed).

I loved those afternoons with you and Bex.