A Brand New Bag

by Sheila Connolly

The black hole. See my problem?

This past week I purchased a new purse. I have one that is serviceable, although items like my keys tend to disappear into the black depths, requiring much embarrassing scrabbling in public and/or small nervous crises.  But this is a special purchase:  I need a new bag for a trip to Italy.

When I first started traveling, as a young woman, I was warned to hang on to my bag (which held my passport and money, if not much else—I didn't have a credit card for years).  Conventional wisdom said: Keep it tucked under your arm at all times; don't set it down on a counter while haggling with a vendor; never flash what cash you had. Pickpockets and purse snatcher abounded, especially in Italy.

I did have my purse stolen once, but that was in London—by someone who had to climb across the façade of a building on a busy street to come in through my third floor window while I was taking a bath down the hall.  I didn't see that one coming.  That necessitated making a police report (a lovely sympathetic bobby came to the B&B and talked to me in the kitchen over the classic cup of tea), finding the US Embassy and getting a new passport, and after I'd moved on to France with my new passport, wheedling a rental car company into letting me have a car despite the fact I had no driver's license.  The French were very accommodating, and I didn't even have to bribe anyone.

I have also been accosted by gypsies in France, including one small grubby boy who kept saying "donnez moi un sou" and was rather annoyed when I didn't.  For your information, the sou hasn't been currency in France for quite a while, and it never was worth much.  It had devolved into a stock phrase for panhandlers. Anyway, I didn't open my purse.

Back to the bag.  The first thing I wanted was a shoulder strap, a long one so that I could wear it across my body, thus keeping my hands free.  Funny—there aren't that many bags with functional shoulder straps available these days, although there are some with very decorative shorter straps.

I also wanted pockets that zipped—and I got that with a vengeance.  The new purse has six outside zippered pockets and one interior zippered pocket, plus two open pockets, one for the ubiquitous cell phone.  And (drumroll, please) it has its own umbrella, which lives in its own little inside pocket that snaps shut.  Once I saw that I was sold.

The best part is that all the pockets and the interior are lined with a bright, cheerful print fabric—not like my current black pit of a purse.  I might even be able to find something (and will take along one of my mini LED flashlights in case I do need to search)!

The thing should also be indestructible, because it's not real leather—it's a believable fake.  My grandmother would be appalled:  in her world, ladies carried leather bags and wore leather shoes, preferably matching.  She was a woman who had more than one real alligator handbag (it was a long time ago, and I didn't keep them). But this handy (and inexpensive) fake leather bag is something I don't have to worry about.  I can drag it through puddles and carry it in the rain and it will probably fare better than I will.

But it needs to be sturdy, because my bags usually average about eight to ten pounds in weight.  What's in there?  Wallet (ID, credit cards, health insurance card), small notebook (hey, I'm a writer!), usually a camera, cell phone, keys, cash (the coins to fall to the bottom and get forgotten), about a dozen pens, Tylenol, antacids, tissues, often a book to read, in case I have to wait somewhere, now and then a tablet computer…the list goes on.  I think I'm permanently tilted from carrying this accumulation on my left shoulder for decades. But I'd bet that if I walloped somebody in the head with it (especially with that nice long strap), the guy would drop in his tracks!

Sometimes I envy men:  they stick a wallet in their back pocket and go.  I don't know how they do it.

The Purse Inheritance

by Sheila Connolly

She pulled the battered box toward her and untied the faded ribbons.  Lifting the lid, she inhaled deeply of the scent that meant childhood to her—her grandmother's floral sachet, mixed with her mother's cigarette smoke.  Inside the box lay neatly wrapped bundles, each swathed in white tissue paper, tied with colored ribbon, a brief note tucked under the bow, in her grandmother's or her mother's handwriting…written on a "DON'T FORGET" pad.  How could she forget? 

No, I haven't gone over to writing women's fiction; this is a true story. 

Recently my sister moved into a new home, and in the process she was purging her place of unnecessary items.  Her concept of "necessary" and mine aren't quite in synch, but unarguably I have more storage space than she does.  As a result, I am now the designated custodian of the hereditary purse collection. 

We're not talking ancient or valuable here, except for the family associations.  What I have is about two dozen evening purses that belonged to my grandmother and my mother, and which date from roughly the late 1940s to the 1960s (including a tasteful black clutch I carried to my first formal dance in 1967).  And many are beautiful. 

My grandmother, in the
purse years

As I've no doubt mentioned before, my grandmother left her husband, after he'd decided he wanted to be a dairy farmer in Maine and failed, and she moved to New York City, where she found work during WWII.  When I say she found work, there's a story there too:  she was barely scraping by when she attended a funeral in New Jersey for an old family friend, where she met someone who was instrumental in getting her a job at Lipton Tea (and a ride back to the city, saving her the train fare), where she rose to the position of Assistant Director of Human Resources before retiring in 1958.  I'm guessing that the Golden Age of the Purses lies between 1945 and 1958, and I know the purses (along with my grandmother, of course) attended some fabulous events, including a dinner with the Queen of England. 

So the purse collection speaks of another time and place, the glamorous New York when there were still night clubs and big name bands, where you could sing along to golden-age Broadway musicals, and dine at the 21 Club or Le Pavillon or the Waldorf.  And you had to have the right purse for every occasion. 

Most of the beaded purses are French, a few Belgian, and the beadwork is elegant and intricate.  Most came from a small boutique called Henri Bétrix, on Madison Avenue.  I was probably there at some point—shopping was one of our traditional school-holiday pastimes when my sister and I visited my grandmother, and we were familiar with most of the high-end boutiques on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, not to mention Tiffany's (we used to go in and try on diamonds for fun, when I was a child). 

There are those (like my sister) who would argue that I shouldn't be keeping such useless stuff.  But as long as I have space I'm going to hang on to things like these purses, not only because they belonged to people I loved, but also because they capture a moment in time, from a lifestyle now gone.  And I still visit the purses now and then and remember the women who bought them and carried them, which now include me and my daughter (who in fact carried the paisley purse on a recent trip to New York City).