The bag is home. The purse is a satellite. The purse is pure woman. The bag is androgynous. On occasion I want a purse but wriggle out of its corset shortly after it has made acquaintance with my arm and shoulder blade. What is this, my body asks? And I sigh. Purse. Even the word feels foreign on my tongue, moves my mouth in unfamiliar ways. Purse is then put in a mailer and shipped off to mother who after all is purse. The purse is always leather. Usually made in Italy and a dark shade of brown, or black, though occasionally red. The purse has two kinds of handles, a snap—or clutch and several compartments, little places for notes, rare coins…no, wait that is bag not purse. Inside purse she will put a comb, lipstick, bobby pins, several bottles of pills, rum and butter Lifesavers, a nail file, Wrigley’s spearmint, Rothman’s king size, a lighter—usually gold—and accompanied by an inhaler, a clutch wallet filled with 20s and a few 100 dollar bills folded in the inner reaches in case, just in case. That is the purse. That is mother. That is the essence of a kind of woman, a kind of Winnie, who is all-woman. No one but mother (and Winnie of course) has consistently carried a purse in my life and when I choose a purse it is usually because I feel I have grown up, or want not to be called Sir at the Fruiterie. The bag is androgynous, as I said, but it is also daughter, or young, which I don’t mind being, or being mistaken for. Getting young is always good. Especially after one feels grown up. The bag is roamer. The bag, usually canvas, is filled to burst with small stapler, pen knife, elastic bands, paper clips (round, Italian), pens and pencils, post-its, highlighters, Moleskine or otherwise, an envelope of photographs, a stash of postcards just in case, and stamps of course—many, often vintage, and from all over the world—some useful, some not, either way they will be licked and applied. It contains favorite titles: Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, The Life of the Mind, The Weather, Furious—most bags have drawn the line at The Making of Americans, or Ulysses—but there is always room for Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, or pocket-sized editions of Emily Dickinson and Sappho (the Mary Barnard translations alas, not the Carson…). It contains camera, cord, ear plugs, lipstick, lip balm, iPod, cell phone, protein bar, nuts and sometimes a laptop. Over the years the titles have changed, the journals renewed quarterly, the bag annually or so, the contents augmented by preoccupations and the growth of technology (now a cassette, now a cd, now a memory stick), but there is usually a bit of leaf, a twig, several small toys, extra socks, a lug nut found on a walk, a bit of shale, a map, a rusted pipe, a bit of bone, a cutting of something that needs replanting, a list of things to encourage, a list of things to leave behind, a key, library cards and metro cards, a passport and so on. The bag is never quite the right size, nor shape, and often tears before one wants, and there is always the memory of that one you didn’t choose. The bag haunting. The bags that other women chose. Or the bags that chose other women. Either way one is always a little disappointed. One regards other women, walking upright now, their shoulders soothed by the perfection of their bags, their fit, the right material and compartments. They are meeting each other for a glass of wine in a place of smooth surfaces and clean lines where they will drop their bags smug and plump at their feet, not even aware of their good fortune in finding one another, the good friend, the one that will be carried, or carry them from room to room.
