“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your father feels this way also. But he is bitter against it, and wants what it has to offer despite himself. She did not care. She was deeply attached to the other brother. She collected buttons and string and papers, even as she collected animals. To her the buttons almost seemed to have consciousness, and when she was alone she would take out her boxes of buttons and hold some in her hands, and remember the garments to which they belonged, and when she had worn them, and how the weather had been; and she lived in a present that was deeply colored by the past.

(The material on buttons surprised me a great deal. I had forgotten about Ella’s penchant for collecting things, and as far as I know had not mentioned it to Jane. Jane had no conscious memory of my doing so. As soon as Seth mentioned buttons, I immediately had a picture of Aunt Ella holding an old-fashioned red tin box, in which many buttons lay. As a boy I had been fascinated by this.)

Her husband did resent this, and he would eye her when she sat thus, but he did not say a thing. She had saved the buttons from his garments also, and she would say, “Do you remember when you wore this suit, and where we were, and what we did?”

Originally, she collected the buttons to help him in his business. His family was large and scattered. He took great pains in his work, but he was also frightened; and the world confused him and he chattered, again like a squirrel. But they were very free in their own way, and your father’s family never forgave them for this freedom.

(Break at 9:54. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her pace had been rather fast, her eyes had remained closed. She had no offhand conscious memory of hearing about Aunt Ella’s penchant for collecting buttons, although she could have heard it easily enough from my mother, for instance.