A New Bag

I have a love-hate relationship with purses. I acknowledge the need for a functional bag to carry my necessary items, but why do purses and I end up hating one another?

Shoulder bags are more convenient for keeping your hands free, but I find myself walking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with one shoulder significantly higher than the other in an effort to keep the shoulder strap in place.

For a while, I switched to a small backpack to relieve the neck and back pain caused by years of carrying a purse filled with ten pounds of stuff. Then I switched to a bag with shorter straps that I carried on my arm, like those handbags of long ago.

When I was growing up in the 60's, women did not have shoulder bags. A woman carried her handbag by the short handles or hung it on the crook of her arm. I remember my Mother's purse. It was square and had one of those gold locking clasps. It held a small change purse, her gold compact, a lipstick, hankie, gloves, and a pack of Doublemint gum.

Her house key was on a stored with the car key in a leather holder that tucked the keys in between it's buttery folds.

My purse is filled with the things I cannot live without: a fat wallet stuffed with magical plastic cards, cash and coins. My reading glasses, sunglasses, and checkbook (just in case the plastic card loses it's magic!) I have to carry allergy medicine, an asthma inhaler, eye drops, a bottle of motrin, gum, lip gloss and chap stick.

There are other assorted things that seem to find their way into my purse, settle down and multiply like a bunch of rabbits. Receipts, scraps of paper with notes, grocery lists, blog ideas, doodles. Two or three pens that have no ink, and of course a couple of tissues that spread their dust everywhere.

I never spend more than twenty dollars on a purse, because I know that this love affair cannot last. After the honeymoon period, I'll be over the softness of the leather, or tired of its funky color. When its shape no longer makes me smile and the straps begin to sag and droop, my eye will begin to wander. I'll covet my neighbor's perfect little handbag. Before long I am hanging out at Target, trying on new bags while my tired purse looks on sadly from the basket.

I imagine the new purse, tucked next to the old soul in the cart, looks with pity on the other. The bold new bag is confident that it is never going to be forsaken. The old bag knows better.