The Sweetness Left Behind

The biscuit tin has spanned three generations. It sits on a shelf now in my cupboard, tucked away safely, its bright colours barely softened by time, the metal ever so slightly dulled in spots where fingers have lifted the lid a thousand times. It is an ordinary tin, really. The sort that once held an array of cream assorted biscuits, the offerings remain faintly detailed on the underneath of the tin, still today, and was never allowed to become rubbish because a good tin was too useful to throw away. 

Inside are the things that mattered. Cotton wound around wooden spools. Small scissors with familiar handles, dressmaking shears, sewing needles still in packets and some tucked into a little yellow felt lady and embroidery thread. Ancient tins sit within the tin, each one holding a collection of mysteries - buttons, press studs, safety pins, odd lengths of elastic, things with purpose, even today. And the sock mushroom. I can almost picture it: the wooden shape used to stretch a sock over while she darned a hole in her husband’s socks, or mum’s socks, carefully made stitches that brought worn heels and threadbare toes back to life. 

This mushroom, an extension of her hands. Those hands were arthritic. Joints swollen, fingers stiff with pain, especially in winter and worsening as the years passed by. And yet they worked. They made costumes and sewed dresses for her daughter. They brought seams together, attached buttons, shortened hems, mended, threaded needles, tied tiny knots. They embroidered (fancy stitch she termed it), they turned fabric into something useful, sometimes beautiful. Nothing was wasted. 

I imagine the hours she spent with that tin beside her. Sometimes seated at her treddle sewing machine with its carved wooden drawers and delicate black and gold paintwork. I remember the sound of it whirring away with content as it reached full speed. The afternoon light falling across her lap through the big dining room window. Her pink glasses slipping slightly down her nose. The quiet snip of scissors, the pull of thread through fabric. Done. 

I never thought much about the tin in my childhood. It was simply there, familiar. Like she was. Now I understand that it was holding pieces of our family long before I knew to call them memories. Sometimes, when I open that tin, I am surprised by how quickly my Grandma returns. Not in a photograph. Not in a story someone tells about her. She comes back through scent. 

There is something soft and talcy inside that tin, a faint powdery sweetness that belongs entirely to her. Remnants of the scented powder sachets she received as gifts from family both during and soon after the war years. They were in her bedroom drawers and they were in this tin. They were precious. They smelled divine.   I open the lid and breathe her in. For a moment, I am not in my own home. I am somewhere in the past, close enough to hear my Grandma’s voice. 

I can almost see those arthritic fingers working the needle. I can feel the warmth of her beside me. And then, just as quickly, she is gone. That is why sometimes I don't open the tin. I am afraid of the day I will lift the lid, breathe in deeply, and find nothing. No scent. No soft trace of her. Only thread and metal and the ordinary smell of things that have perhaps been kept too long. 

That is the strange weight of what this tin carries. It isn't really the needles or the scissors or the buttons. It isn't even the things she made or the socks she repaired. It is her. Or what remains of her. Three generations have reached into that tin. Three generations have used what was inside it to mend, make, and carry on. First grandma, then mum. For now it is just mine. I sometimes wonder what my Grandma would think if she knew how carefully I keep it. Whether she would laugh at me for treating an old biscuit tin like something precious. 

Occasionally, I lift the lid. To sew a button on, to seek out a safety pin, to mend. Then, I touch the cottons reels, the scissors. Open and move the little tins around. Run my fingers over the smoothness of the wooden sock mushroom. 

And before I close it again, I inhale. Not for long, but just in case. Just in case there is still enough of her left inside to carry me back.