Buttons: Clasps: Fasteners
Closures and openers, common through unique, these buttons have stories. Here's the tale of this Satsuma pendant.
Past Present Future
Hand-me-downs. I’m blessed to have a childless aunt that hands down her jewelry to me. I think her collection of button jewelry came from a store in Los Angeles’s Farmers’ Market. The bracelets were gifted to me at different times, years after the pendant.
Today I started researching the Japanese hand painted pendant and learned it is a Satsuma button made sometime between the Meiji period to present day. I’m thinking it’s older than newer.
The woman and child wearing kimono with traditional hair styles reminds me of mothers and children, more specifically, the mothers in my family. I’ve worn it quite a long time, enough that it holds good ‘mojo’.
The amount of research I’m doing on these buttons consumed my day and part of the night. I know it has been triggered by my procrastination about another project.
The Other Project
It’s quite an honor really. I’ve been asked to sit on a panel of family members, descendants of Nisei Soldiers. It should be easy, just introduce myself, tell a bit about Toshiaki Kuge and his objects on display in the exhibit. After all, I’ve been thinking about his diary, letters and the rest since I inventoried them in 2022. Plus that’s why I created Slotted Spheres. Sharing Uncle Tosh and Auntie Mae’s story is not only my passion, but more importantly, my duty. But it’s being videotaped. Inhale.
This is my second chance to speak publicly about the Kuge family. The first was a collaboration with Haruka Sakaguchi and her The Camps America Built. Exhale.
Getting Over It
A poised public speaker I know, wears a treasured piece of jewelry when she is speaking. In light of this, I’ve chosen to wear the Satsuma button pendant. It probably will be hidden under the jacket I’ve chosen to wear. This Chico jacket is a print with red background and cheery colors with an Asian family enjoying a celebration.
It is currently missing a button. I think I recently jettisoned the missing button out of my clutter as I’ve decided to not hoard any sort of button, excluding auntie’s hand-me-downs. The set of buttons currently on the jacket are at least the 2nd set chosen and sewn on by mom. She’d always notice the buttons loosening and kept that jacket to tighten the buttons more times than I can remember.
Mom gave me that jacket as a ‘First Day of School’ clothing the same year she started buying my children school clothes during a special summer shopping trip. My kids and I all savor our memories of back to school shopping with “Grandma”. It’s a special jacket, this Chico jacket my mom bought for me for my first day of school with another classroom of new students, new families, a new community. I suppose this jacket makes me look like a retired teacher; that makes me happy.
Pause
In light of this I do know what jacket and jewelry I’m wearing, flattering or not, while I participate in the panel later this month. In fact I need to get back to bulleting some facts into a little outline I need to be able to have roll off my tongue. I’m sure it’ll be different once I see what I’ve only dared to imagine, the exhibit itself. I’ve tried to keep the canvas clear so I can just appreciate the exhibit as I experience it. Now that I’ve worked through what I’m going to wear and the breathing exercises I’m practicing, I’m feeling courageous, confident and full of character (an old Girl Scout saying).
I hope you are stepping out of your comfort zone in order to grow and discover more of yourself. If I can, you can! Ask me how if you need a nudge.
Alright, enough dilly-dallying. It’s time for me to bite the bullet and organize the invisible into a list of bullets I’m covering in the panel next Sunday.
I feel better now that I’ve had a lovely diversion here on Substack.
I’m stepping into the room just as I am. I’ll let you know how it goes. By the time you read this, the panel will be over with and I shall be creating for a library learning moment at my local library.
Thanks for reading!
Post Script Once I let go of all attachments while writing this newsletter, I scheduled it to be posted and found I been contacted by someone I admire here on Substack. I kid you not. She just answered a dream: try to grow an audience through a collaboration. I’ll get back to you about that. Dream all of your dreams, THEY COME TRUE!
“Only in our doing can we grasp you.”
~Rainier Maria Rilke
“All the power of the universe is with you. Feel it, know it, then act as though it were true.”
~Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind Collection, 2012, p.211, Penguin
Way to go, MamaCarole. I love everything about this.
Hope that all went well for you!