The Tailor on Clement Street

My winter coat lost a button the size of a quarter, and I couldn't find a match anywhere. A friend sent me to a tiny tailor shop on Clement Street run by a man named Mr. Chen, who has been sewing there since 1978.

The shop is wall-to-wall jars of buttons, sorted by color like a rainbow. He looked at my coat, squinted, reached up to the third shelf without hesitation, and pulled out a perfect match. I actually gasped.

While he sewed it on, he told me about altering wedding dresses for three generations of the same family. He showed me a photo of the grandmother, the mother and the daughter, all in the same dress, adjusted each time.

He charged me two dollars. I gave him five and he gave me a lollipop. I'm forty-one years old. It was the best lollipop of my life.