The perfect handbag has eluded me for a lifetime, and I am still on a quest to find the perfect one. Every time I go into a department store, I am drawn to pretty purses. Sometimes willingly; sometimes not. Even when I resist the urge, a
magnetic force pulls me in, and there I go again, searching for a
pocketbook that will organize my clutter. I analyze the architecture of
each one. I measure compartments for lipstick, note pad, pencil and pen.
Fashion is not the primary issue; organization is the focus. But all too often, when
sizing-up a handbag, I find that it is too big, too little, too heavy, or that it lacks
the indispensable outside pocket for my keys.
One day while I evaluated a
prospective purchase in a store, a woman across from me, obviously in her own
sanctimonious search, made a comment, whereupon we exchanged commiserating
dialogue about our handbag pursuits. I revealed to the stranger my mission to find the perfect bag. She confided in me that, without realizing
it, she had been doing the same thing.
After comparing notes about our failed missions, the
stranger, who didn’t seem like a stranger anymore, walked away empty-handed,
but on that day, I found the presumptive flawless bag. It was lightweight with
partitions and cubbyholes and even boasted of the crucial outside pocket. Happy
with my new find, I went home and filled up the compartments with essential
nonessentials from my archaic address book to mini flashlight.
Unfortunately, as time went on, my new handbag became overcrowded. With an eerie resemblance
to the movie Groundhog Day, another
hunt ensued and the cycle began all over again.
At the height of one of my bulging
handbag dilemmas, I attended a girls’ weekend with my sisters and nieces. As we climbed into a van to go shopping, my niece slid into the driver’s
seat and laid a small case, not much bigger than a powder compact, on
the console between us. There was no handbag in sight, and I was intrigued.
“Where’s your
purse?” I asked.
“I don’t carry one,” she said. “I just have a cell phone,
credit card and keys.” Sitting there in the car, across from my niece, I pondered this strange
phenomenon.
We arrived at our destination, and as we hoofed it down the
sidewalk, my niece’s long-legged stride carried her a couple of steps ahead of
me. Arms swinging, she exuded confidence and glided freely without the
constraints of a handbag – or anything else. Nothing weighed her down or got in
her way. Only a tiny case nestled in the palm of her hand and keys jangled in
her pocket. In her wake, I wanted to reach out and grab from her aura a bit of freedom for
myself, and I wished I could drop my pocketbook and let it lay where it fell, but I
continued clutching the weighty extension of my inner self. After that weekend, I vowed to whittle my handbag inventory, but whittling is slow and arduous.
A
couple of weeks later, my husband and I went to a golf tournament. When we approached the shuttle, a worker told me I would have to leave my purse behind. In a panic, I looked down at the petite leather pouch. I thought it would
pass Security’s scrutiny, but I had been mistaken. Downtrodden, I turned and hurried back to the car,
wondering how I could possibly cram all of my treasures into my jeans pockets.
I
opened the trunk and laid down my purse as gently as I’d lay down a baby. I unzipped
it and surveyed everything I could not do without, even for a day; my wallet; my comb; my tissues. Time bore down
on me; I had to act swiftly. How could I possibly choose what to take and what
to leave behind? Then, in a curious act I cannot explain, even to this day, I retrieved only
one item, a slender tube of pink petal lipstick. I closed the trunk
and marched back to the bus with long strides and arms swinging, my feet barely
touching the pavement, fluttering as freely as a butterfly. I realized I had everything
I needed in the palm of my hand, and I never even missed the things I left
behind.
🍀🍃🍀🍃🍀
