I had hoped to write to you twice this month; instead, this one piece has ballooned into an opus in several movements. Here’s hoping its length makes up for the fact that it’s coming to you all at once, and that it remains interesting even in the more adagio segments.
Part 1: The Hills
I live at the bottom of four hills. It’s been eight and a half years, and for the first five or so, I really only climbed the two shallower hills with regularity; the steeper pair seemed better left to mountain climbers in sturdy footwear and sweat-wicking fabrics.
This changed at that familiar juncture when so many things had a way of changing: 2020. Lockdown era. I’d also just switched jobs at the time, meaning the new job would now have to be worked from home. More pressingly, we were told to do everything from home, to STAY AT HOME!
I stopped driving. Not getting in the car was a huge part of “staying at home,” (especially in Los Angeles), so much so that I quickly came to equate the two. Where was there to go? What was open? I had no idea, but if I could get there on foot, I decided it didn’t count as leaving the house.
My repertoire of hills expanded within days. And not just the four outside my front door, but also other hills and staircases,1 some I’d never seen before, were added to my list of regular walks2. And every time I left the house, I had the same dilemma: do I take my purse?
The answer, obviously, is no. I tried tote bags and pockets before ultimately settling on the sea-green canvas fanny pack that, for a time, was such a hallmark of my personage that a barista would eventually exclaim to my masked face, “I always recognize you because of your fanny pack!” But however obvious the choice, taking these excursions purse-free represented yet another significant life change for me. I’d been diligently carrying a purse everywhere since my senior year of high school. And it was a habit I’d formed very much on purpose.
Part 2: This is Larry
When I was 17 or 18, I visited the University of Chicago campus on a day designed to give future students (of which I was one) a taste of what life there might be like. For me, the decision to attend had already been made, but that fact only exacerbated my pathological concern about being alone and friendless in my new, swiftly approaching, “adult” life. So, like any high school senior visiting college, I stopped by the local Lutheran church to see if I’d be able to help out as a lay minster come fall.
Today, with many more years of church-lady experience under my belt cincture, the very idea of this inquiry makes me laugh. The fear I’d had — that I, a sane(ish), well-meaning, young person, might enter a church, offer to become an active part of its volunteer corps, and be turned away, “Nah, we’re all set in the help department!” — is just…aww, sweetie. But 22 years ago, I was genuinely worried about it, so when my offer of future participation was warmly received, I was deeply relieved. To the point of distraction, apparently; I left my purse on the floor of the pastor’s office at Augustana Lutheran, walked out onto 53rd Street, and didn’t notice my mistake until a few hours and several blocks later, on 59th Street.
Panic threatened to take hold, but I did what you do when something is lost: I mentally retraced my steps. All these years later, I can still picture that purse. Cross-body, woven, from stiff magenta and orange and green fibers, a cloth flap that buttoned. I can remember the purse, but I can’t remember how I found the church’s number (I did not yet have my own cell phone, and phones of the time didn’t have internet access). I just know that I stood in the lobby of Ida Noyes Hall, listening to the ringing on the other end of the line, praying that someone was around to take my call.
A man answered, but not the one I’d spoken to in person. I explained my dilemma and gave my name, hopeful that the bag had been found. “Marissa Flaxbart?” the man asked. Yes, they had my bag. But that wasn’t all. “I don’t know if you remember me, but this is Larry Long. Your parents sang in my choir.”
In short, the music director at this church (who would go on to be my choir director for the four years I was in college) had been the music director at the church where my parents had sung when I was young. I’d gone to Augustana to try and find a way to fend off my impending friendlessness, and now I was speaking to a man I had known since before my brain began making memories.
It’s a very good story, one of my favorites, and it could be a great Metaforia all on its own. But we’re talking purses here, so let’s press on to my father’s response to the news that his teenage daughter had lost her purse, however temporarily, somewhere on the South Side3. He responded with a prognostication. "Mark my words. You are going to lose your purse within the first month of college." This was, um, not the first time that year I'd left something somewhere.
So determined was I to prove his prediction false that I decided I would take immediate action. Up until then, a purse had been an occasional thing for me. I wasn’t used to reflexively grabbing for it when I left a classroom or a lunch table. I figured I could change that simply enough. I’d start carrying a purse all the time. Backpacks were for juniors. I would become a Purse Girl.
No, make that a Purse Woman.
I did not lose my purse at college. Not once.
Part 3: No Napkins
The regular practice of hiking around my neighborhood has persisted beyond lockdown days. An era of not being able to go anywhere ended, and was replaced by an era of not needing to go anywhere — at least, not during the day, when I work from home at least four days a week. My purse, once a kind of muscle-memory security blanket, now leaves the house with me on a case-by-case basis. I’d love to tell you that convenience is the only factor, but, alas, my right shoulder — my purse shoulder — would sing you a different song.
When, a few months into my current job, I was bothered by some pain in my neck, shoulder, arm, and hand, I saw a physical therapist, who took one look at my back and said, “yep.” To an expert’s eye, the muscle on that side is noticeably more developed. It’s also a little farther away from my spine than its partner on the left. Naturally, I adjusted my work environment, did a few stretches…but even after that, I noticed that the neck-shoulder-arm situation was noticeably less pleasant after a day spent lugging my purse around.
That was the main reason I opted for a simple tote bag a few weeks back, when I spent the morning on an outing with my seven-year-old nephew. On our walk to the park, I didn’t want to haul any extra weight around. Keys, phone, wallet, snacks. That was what I brought.
We sat down under a tree at the park to east some grapes and crackers, the latter coated in some kind of delicious powder. Before we could tuck in, this child (who, I’ll note, turned four just as coronavirus hit California) asked if I had any hand sanitizer. Well, of course I did. In my purse, back at his house. Luckily, the park had a bathroom, so up we got, across the playground, to wash our hands. Then, snacking could commence. Oh boy, was this a tasty snack! I’d brought the snacks from home, and seeing them go over so well filled me with aunt pride.
My reverie was interrupted. “I need to wipe my hands off.” My purse is nearly always crammed with leftover napkins or a packet of tissues. At this moment, there’s a freshly acquired handkerchief in there. But I didn’t have my purse. I looked in the tote bag, saying a silent prayer. The only remotely wipe-like thing in there was a cloth mask which, while clean, was still a face mask, and this kid was too mask-savvy to pretend otherwise. I thought of the bathroom again, but no — nothing but air dryers and government standard one-ply in there. I ended up in the cafe across the street, where napkins taunted me from behind — behind! — the counter, meaning they had to be specially requested as if they were a luxury item, like a straw.
At last, the youth in my care could have de-greased and de-powdered fingers to climb and dig and build with. The high of problem solving did only so much to abate my regret: If only I’d had my purse.
Part 4: What Have You Got In There?
Sometime during Holy Week, as the choir prepares to sing at yet another service, Debbie offers to help me out by putting my purse behind a locked door with the others. “Thanks!” I say, and, “watch out, it’s heavy!” Because it is heavy. Heavy enough to exact a physical toll, albeit over decades, not a distance of a dozen feet. Debbie returns after a few minutes, and I’ve finished whatever my hands had been full with.
“It was heavy!” she laughs. “What have you got in there?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, and it’s the truth. And the problem. I have noticed the bag weighs five or ten or maybe fifty pounds, but I’m not sure why. Things go in, and sometimes they come out, but not always.
There’s a late series episode of Boy Meets World that I think about too often, where Shawn finds a purse4 and falls in love with the woman who left it behind, based solely on the bag’s contents. If someone found my purse, what woman would they imagine its owner to be? Well, she likes candy. She must have dry nasal passages, or why else would she be traveling with saline spray? She sure keeps a lot of paper receipts, even after time has rendered them illegible, blank even! Is she headed to the laundromat with this roll of quarters, or is she a bank teller, taking her work home with her?
Shortly after Easter, I decide to clean the purse out. While there is certainly some garbage in there, and a few nonessential items, I am more surprised by what I’d put in there on purpose but forgotten about. Earlier that day, I wished for a nail file; turns out, I had one on me the whole time. There’s my name tag from church. There’s that tiny first aid kit from a film festival. My nine years as a Girl Scout taught me to “be prepared,” and I guess I held on to that lesson over the years. There never was a slogan about remembering what you were prepared for.
The Last Part: Mall Cop Saves Thanksgiving
Speaking of not remembering, I did lose my purse again, more recently — no doubt a side effect of no longer carrying it everywhere. It was a day or two before Thanksgiving of last year. I’d just arrived in New Mexico, and my dad and I grabbed slices of pizza from a tiny shop at the mall, sat down at a table to enjoy them, then browsed the cookware shop before finally heading over to Uncle Brett’s place, where we hung out for an hour or so.
When it was time to leave Brett’s house and head back to my dad’s, I did laps around the place, retracing my steps over and over again, looking for that purse. Finally, I admitted I must have left it in the car. But it wasn’t in the car. I’d definitely had it when I paid for the pizza, and I was sure I could remember the heft of it on my shoulder as we browsed the cooking store. Could I have set it down in there? I’d noticed a sign advertising a cooking class at the store that night, so I tried calling to see if they had my purse — I had my phone in my coat pocket, now complete with a wallet-case my dad had given to me for my birthday, a gift designed to make my purseless walks a little simpler. It rang and rang, but no one answered. So we headed back to the mall to look in person.
The store was dark; no evidence of any cooking class to speak of. Trying to exhaust all options before I officially lost my cool, I approached a security guard to ask him if the mall had a lost and found. “I think I left my purse here earlier,” I explained sheepishly.
“Oh, that was your purse!” The guard, whose name I’d learn was Oscar, seemed relieved. The couple that owned and ran the pizza shop had found it hanging on the back of my chair and figured it would be missed soon. But when no one came back to claim it, they took it back into their restaurant for safe keeping. The metal gates on the pizza place were shut up tight, but Oscar had the owner’s number. He called and explained everything in brisk Spanish. Just like that, it was all settled. I’d come grab my purse in the morning. No big deal.
It still shocks me that this happened. The top level of surprise is a happy one — gratitude that my bag had been found, that (once again) I’d requested help from the exact person I didn’t know I needed, and that, as has so often been true in my life, I could actually rely on the kindness of strangers. But as I said, strangers helping me out is nothing new. What’s more shocking to me is that I managed to walk away without the purse and not notice. All my years of training, out the window. How is it possible? That I created a false memory of it hanging on my shoulder as I shopped; that I walked back past the table where we’d sat and not seen it hanging there; that I’d gone to my uncle’s house and drank a soda and never noticed that a part of me was missing, this manufactured appendage.
That’s what the purse had become, right? That’s what all my efforts were for. I was trying to connect this outside object to my nervous system like I was some kind of low-tech cyborg. As I’ve written already, I was, in a sense successful, and not just psychologically. The purse has undeniably impacted my body physically.
One of the reasons it’s taken me so long to get this very lengthy missive to you is that I like to write my first drafts out in longhand, and these past couple of weeks, gripping a pen for any length of time makes my fingertips fall asleep. Sure, it could just be run-of-the-mill carpal tunnel, but I know that the nerve that connects my fingers to my brain goes up my arm and across my bulked-up purse shoulder. I know that the numbness gets worse after I’ve been carrying my purse around.
The thing about a habit is that you don’t think about it. That’s what I was going for when I first started carrying the thing everywhere — automatic, unconsidered, sure-fire, set it and forget it. But now, I am forced to try something new: thinking about it. That’s what this was, this five-chapter story. And what did I learn?
I want to have what I need, but I also want to know what I have.
I don’t want to forget about it and count it lost, but I also don’t want to hurt myself dragging it around.
One great thing about a purse is that it keeps you from having your hands full. But as I’ve learned the hard way, getting something out of your hands doesn’t make it any less heavy.
And, as with so many things in this world — and especially in Metaforia — I find that the takeaways apply to so much more than the matter at hand. That the rules I’m creating for my literal bag apply pretty neatly to my metaphorical baggage.
I’ve been enjoying life with my newly organized purse. I’ve been trying to carry it across my body, so the weight falls on the other shoulder for a change. Earlier tonight I caught myself putting the torn pieces of a straw wrapper in the bag, like it was my own personal trash compactor, and I’m pleased that I noticed and stopped myself. Maybe I’m creating new habits. Then again, maybe I don’t want new habits. Maybe my next chapter will be less about setting and forgetting, and more about noticing what I need right now.
With regards to my purse, if nothing else.
The Silver Lake neighborhood has lots of little staircases, a remnant from a time before people took cars everywhere, but still needed to get up and down hills to catch a street car.
On the Jordan, Jesse, Go! podcast, this Dr. Fauci-approved body-moving ritual, a staple of lockdown era-living, was referred to as a “shitty little walk.”
He would likely have remained blissfully ignorant of this whole tale if not for its ultra-happy ending, which included a figure from his own past. Obviously, I had to tell him the story.
It’s Angela’s purse. Why do I remember this?
I enjoyed this story and can relate to several instances of forgetting my purse and having benevolent folks helping their return.
Interesting perspective. I tried to buy a purse for my wife for many of our first fifteen years together; and, after reading you just now, I'm beginning to see the light at the bottom of ...