Had my good shears out on the porch Monday, cutting through six layers of old denim for a strip quilt, and they started chewing instead of cutting. Chewing. You know that sound. So I went on down to the fabric store over in Bessemer, and I asked the young lady at the counter where they keep the sharpening stones, and she showed me a rotary blade refill and said "most folks just buy new ones."

Buy new ones.

Honey, these shears came to me from my grandmother. I don't know how old they are, older than me I expect. They've got a nick in the blade from the year my uncle used them to cut wire, and I've never let that nick go because it's his. You don't throw that in a bin and drive to the store.

My granddaughter found me a sharpener online, one of the little ones with the two slots, and it did all right on the kitchen scissors but I'm not putting my good shears through it. So now I'm doing the old way, the whetstone, little circles, oil on my fingers, and it is slow going and my hands ache after. But they're coming back. Cutting paper smooth again this morning.

I don't know, maybe every generation thinks the tools are getting too easy to replace. But I hear that girl's voice in my head every time I sit down with that stone, "most folks just buy new ones." Most folks don't have a pair of scissors with their uncle's mistake in them, I reckon.