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You need to sew on that button, and you quickly thread the needle and get it done, without even thinking about what you are doing.

We must realize there is someone else out there who has probably just lost a button. She or he caught the button, but don’t know the first thing about how to reattach it to the garment.

We must never forget how blessed we are, or how easy it is for us to help another with even the simplest of things, that we should watch for and be aware of another person’s needs. If we always just remember that each and every day someone somewhere is just for the very first time struggling to thread a needle and sew on that button. Most of us can remember our first time we did that.

Sewing on the family’s lost or loose buttons were my first lessons in sewing. I was very young, but so thrilled that was “my job” and it was a job.

Remember how you at first went over the side of the button instead of into the holes. It really was quite a trick, up and down, up and down, through those holes, that button slipping and sliding around, until you finally got it anchored.

Boys and girls alike need to know how. My youngest son Arthur, better known as Luckey, sitting on the edge of his bunk (with the armed forces in Germany years ago) when a fellow soldier said, “Hey man, can you sew on a button?” As he sat there, doing just that. Each of them had been issued a little sewing kit in their gear, no instructions for using it though, of course.

Just a thought. It could be a fun session next time the little guys come over, in which grandma can say, “Hey, can you sew on a button? Let’s try.”

Myra has a neat hint to thread a needle, a new one on me. She says to first fold the end of the thread over the needle. Holding the thread taught, slide it down off the sharp point of the needle, keeping that point pinched up tight. Now, push that point you created right through the eye of the needle. It works great.

Then, while laughing, she reached down, picked up a discarded envelope, cut a very narrow needle-pointed section of its folded edge — about an inch long — then opened that dart-shaped wedge and said, “just lay your thread right in this fold and slip your paper point through the needle’s eye.” As you grasp the thread, pull the paper back out, leaving the needle threaded. Now I must tell you that was a new one on me.

Bye, and God bless our nation.

Aunt Norie, P.O. Box 265, Tonganoxie 66086, auntnorie@bdc.net.