she's quite and gentle, almost unassuming, as she slowly describes moments of her early childhood...she silently weeps as she remembers the loneliness of being youngest child in a large family...living on a dairy farm in a region of the country that is not known for its dairy farms, an oddity in itself...but the little farm made it, day after day, gallon after gallon...and she, along with her sisters and mom and dad worked hard as only dairy folks know...the farm wasn't her family's, it was rented...her family living on this land, working the cattle, struggling to make any profit for the owner and for her family was difficult... poverty, always just one sick cow away...but, what she remembers most is not the hard work or the hot summer days or the 4am milking in the dead of winter...she remembers being so lonely...the family rules, you know...the unwritten, unspoken rules in the air we breathe...more powerful than any stone-carved commandment...thou shalt not reveal deep feelings of your soul...keep quiet, thou shalt not weep...never let anyone see your pain...do not be real...you will be humiliated by your sisters, criticized, tormented...and scolded by your mother...lonely, normal, secret pain...except, her father...not there very often, always working somewhere...but, he delighted in her, his youngest child...always giving her a tiny bit of special attention...a smile, a private moment, a bit of protection from the harsh elements of the air around her, from the constant ridicule of her older ones...she misses him most...and in the world of unspoken rules, she could never tell him and he could never ask why this little quiet one was so quiet...
she remembers being so little and curious...poverty meant few clothes, fewer toys...isolation...so, she found ways to play...so curious and inventive...that old jar of buttons mom always kept to use to do the obvious repair of third-hand clothing...her tiny hands lifting the large jar, spilling out the buttons on the floor...gazing, studying, touching, spreading the buttons...making a world of friends, button friends...and they visited with each other...the red ones, the grey ones, the white ones...they looked like families, some all alike, some big, some little...some broken, some chipped...so fun!...buttons to swirl and spin...and to talk to...yes, to talk to...like friends, family, secret family...and there was one...one button...a different kind of button than all the rest...an odd shaped button...like me, she thought...and odd button...feeling different, out of place, set apart, alone, odd...holding the odd-shaped button, fingering its shape, grasping, knowing what it feels...
can odd be re-formed into lovely? can odd be trans-formed into unique? can different be admired? can a button be a mirror of a soul?
button, button, who's got the button...?
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