A women’s purse can be a place of mystery. Take Queen Elizabeth II’s purse. What could she possibly be carrying around in her ever-present accoutrement? Car keys? She doesn’t drive; carriages or cars. A personal dresser shops for her clothes so she doesn’t need shopping money. And wouldn’t it be strange carrying around currency with your picture on it. No doubt, some faux pas related to that. Family pictures, perhaps? Why bother? Anyone she would share pictures with already knows what they look like as does the rest of the world. Just go to any newsstand and the magazines are brimming with the grand kids' pictures courtesy of the paparazzi. A comb and brush? Maybe, but is there a need for hair styling tools when one always wears a hat in public. Maybe some extra bobby pins to hold it in place. But I’m sure there is a royal job where that is in someone’s job description, “royal toucher upper”. Feminine hygiene products? Did you know she is an octogenarian? See, a mystery.
Men don’t carry purses. Whatever they need they jam into their pockets. Wallets in the back, change, money clips, and keys in their front pockets. And there’s not much a man can fit into a wallet, so no mystery in wallets. Boring, aren’t they?
A women’s purse can be a convenience store. Zip into one, snatch the needed item, and zip out. That was my mother’s purse. Need something to write with? Here is pen and paper. No sweetner at the table, only sugar? I think there’s a packet of the pink stuff “borrowed” from another restaurant somewhere. Gum? Here’s a stick. It was a mobile M.A.S.H. unit stocked with a few stray band-aids and alcohol pad. Sore throat? No worries, there must be a throat lozenge jammed somewhere in here. Oh, can’t find one? How about a piece of hard candy instead, dug out of the corner where it’s hiding, a partially unwrapped butterscotch? The hair salon had nothing on mom’s purse: compact mirror, comb or brush, and a cylinder of lipstick to top off the touch up. Something caught in your teeth. Where is the floss? How about her wallet that was excessively fat and too long to fit in anyone’s pocket, even a man’s. There were more coupons than paper bills stuffed in it. And always lots of change to feed parking meters or gum machines. Her purse was communal property hanging off the hallway closet doorknob when not hanging off her shoulder and ransacked often, right after one of her children said, “I need money for…” We never thought to touch Dad’s money that sat on the dresser in their bedroom. The purse was fair game.
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I tend to be a minimalist and therefore carry the compact car of purses, small and cramped. My co-workers laugh at my baby purses that are only big enough for a small wallet and cell phone, a wallet dangling on a strap. The closest I came to carrying a large purse on a regular basis was the commando diaper bag I slogged around for a couple of years while my daughter was young. It was a godsend. A mobile store attached to a strap stocked with: extra clothes, diapers, wipes, tissues, hand sanitizer, Cheerios, grapes and other quick snacks, small toys, a board book or two, drinks and a camera to capture the moments the paparazzi where sure to miss because they were following the royals.
Lately, I started thinking about my mother’s large purse, the kind you slip the straps over your shoulder that rests against your side. It was so much more than a purse. It made me think about how much my daughter was missing out on one of life’s rituals because I wasn’t a large purse carrier. My Polly Pockets sized purse serves no useful purpose to her or anyone else needing some useful life supply. The diaper bag was convenient but I am past that life stage, and face it, a twelve-year-old girl doesn’t want to go digging around for Cheerios in anyone’s purse. More and more, I am seeing the advantages of a larger purse. Gadgets have entered my life as well as products for my aging body. I have no place to put all of the stuff I’m dependent upon. So lately, I have taken to carrying a larger purse. My daughter has carried one for a while. It was a preference embedded in her DNA she obviously didn’t get from me. I am missing the large purse chromosome, but necessity is the mother of invention and my new learned behavior is carrying around a large purse too. Maybe, just maybe, my daughter will be seeking out things buried in my purse she didn’t think to pack in her own and she too will have memories of her mom’s purse. It’s never too late.
