Childhood memorabilia

When we visited my Dad this past weekend, I snooped through the basement of the house where I grew up. Almost every visit turns up something interesting.

Like our old typewriter:



How many of you remember the days of MANUAL typewriters? Note the lack of letters on the keys; I don't remember where we got this typewriter, but I suspect it was once used in a typing course. We used eraser paper instead of a Delete key.

Another relic: a computer game...on TAPE CASSETTE. I think this one belonged to my brother; I was much more into the text adventure games.



I also found a box of old sewing things of my Mom's. Now that I'm sewing myself, I was much more interested. Here's an old tin of sewing supplies, which I suspect Mom must have used as her travel sewing kit:



I also found several jars of colour-sorted buttons, plus a big unsorted button jar. While Jeff helped my father with some computer stuff, I went through the big jar and sorted the rest of buttons to take home and use in my own sewing projects.



Back when I was a teenager, Mom was disappointed that I had no interest in sewing; sewing was one of her passions, after all, and she had so much she could have taught me. I sometimes feel guilty about that now, and regret that I missed that opportunity.

As I picked up each button, I realized that Mom must have handled every one of these buttons as well. Mom's been gone for nearly 20 years, but at that moment I suddenly felt closer to her. Sorting through all those buttons many years later, I could almost feel Mom smiling beside me, happy that all that time she spent on that collection wouldn't be wasted. Mom hated waste.

I also brought home some other sewing supplies, and some unused fabric -- I even recognized some of that fabric from some of the clothes she had made for Jim, Ruth and me. I plan to use Mom's fabric, buttons and some of her other sewing supplies in my own projects.

I think Mom would have been pleased.





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