A Woman's Purse

There is something about a woman's purse. It is a place of mystery, a treasure trove, a cherished item, a coveted possession, a thing from which one cannot be parted, or nowadays - nothing at all.

My husband has shared that his mother told him as a child, that you never go in your lady's purse! On the rare occasion that he needs something, like a set of keys for example, that might be in my purse, he asks first and then asks for directions, and even then often has a hard time retrieving the item. I'm not sure why it is so difficult to find something in my purse. It's not that complicated, although there is an outside pocket and an inside pocket and two sections...

I don't think I have a lot of "stuff" in my purse. My mother, long before Wet Wipes, used to carry a damp washcloth in a plastic bag in her purse. You never knew when someone's sticky hands might need a wipe. Currently in my purse is my wallet, a grocery list, a lipstick (or two), two pens, a set of keys, my reading glasses, an assortment of mints from restaurants provided with the bill, a sample of dental floss from my last dentist visit, a variety of pills (most of them travel headache related), a couple of business cards (must remember to book a time with the massage therapist), and a Tim Horton's card. There might be other items - I'm not peering into my purse at the moment.

But you go ahead - there it is, leopard print and all. I do like my orange pen which is easy to find in the depths of my purse.

Do you have a full purse? My mother-in-law, who in her defense is suffering from dementia, keeps her whole life in her purse and it must weigh ten pounds. It is falling apart. It's an old black Joan Rivers purse that she ordered from the home shopping network on tv many years ago. She loves that thing and husband even used black duct tape to secure the inside of it for her. She will not part with it. She recently flew to see her daughter (with husband's help) and she almost wouldn't let them take her purse and put in on the little conveyer belt to go through the scanner at the airport.

My bag is not expensive or designer or anything fancy at all. I don't really have any friends for whom a designer bag is important. None of us have that much disposable income to put towards a purse. But it's comfortable over my shoulder and tosses easily on the seat beside me and has lasted a few years now.

This past summer, my daughter accidentally left her purse, which is more like a wallet with straps, in a McDonald's restaurant in Montreal. When she got home and realized what had happened she went into action cancelling credit cards and arranging for other i.d. to be replaced. She did a great job. She contacted the McDonalds, just in case the purse had turned up, but no luck. A while later, a person contacted her through social media. They had found her purse and wanted to know if she wanted it returned. Daughter said yes and provided an address and did an email transfer of a bit of money to cover the cost of postage, and the individual very kindly mailed it to her. Everything was intact! However, at this point all the i.d. had been replaced, but she still got her purse back and had some faith in humans!

Girls my daughter's age, or younger, don't really seem to carry purses anymore. They carry their phone. They slip their debit / credit card inside the phone case. That's it. They travel light. When I was that age, I was an eighties girl and my purse contained not only a wallet, but a full arsenal of hair products - brush, hairspray, teasing comb... My friend even carried her own cordless curling iron with its own cannister of butane! I probably had a wide variety of makeup, a couple of pairs of earrings, maybe an extra pair of nylons in a ziplock bag... but not a cellphone. There were no cellphones then (shock, horror). I likely had perfume, like Cinnabar from Estee Lauder or L'Air du Temps . I might have had a camera in there too, with it's 110 film. Yes, young women these days travel much lighter.

A woman's purse. Is yours a treasured item, a mystery, or nothing at all?