The buttons on my winter coat have a name. They’re four-hole corozo buttons, named, I think, after the tropical palm that bears corozo nuts, which were once used to fashion buttons, though I suspect mine are plastic. I learned this when I bought a few of them at M & J Trimming, purveyor of beads, braids, buckles, buttons and such, and brought them home to Cleveland so my sister could sew them back onto my coat where two had fallen off.
I’d been walking around these past months with the buttonless top of the coat unfastened, which looked rakish in autumn but now allows frigid air to mug my neck. Dana sewed them on in no time. I probably should have had her teach me how to sew in case other button-related emergencies arise. After all, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. But teach him to sew and he can repair his own damn coat.