Carry on

As a child, I used to feel ever so sorry for my mother and her friends and my aunts and my grandmother, all of whom carried handbags that they called "pocketbooks." My mother's pocketbook was a shoulder bag, but older women  still carried satchel-style bags that they carried by their short little handles, or hung on their forearms. Like all children, I hated to carry anything, and I thought that having to carry a thing full of other things, every day, even on the weekend, would be an intolerable burden on my life.

I gave this considerable thought, in fact. I planned to get around the pocketbook thing the same way men seemed to: with pockets. If every single article of clothing I ever bought and wore had pockets, then I'd never need a pocketbook. One pocket for my money, one pocket for the keys that were the one thing that I envied adults, and maybe one more pocket for random small items. I was also certain that I would never ever wear makeup; and I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't continue to wear a ponytail every single day, which would obviate the need to carry a comb, and so voila! Problem solved.

*****

So last week, I finally finished reading Lina and Serge. I learned a lot about artists and musicians in the early Soviet Union. For example, I learned that Serge Prokofiev was a jerk. I also learned that in the most dire of circumstances, a woman needs a handbag more than almost anything else. Lina was a musician, too; a singer, though not a very successful one. When she was shipped off to the gulag, she carried some sheet music with her. During her eight-year-long imprisonment, she managed to piece together a tote bag and to embroider it with her own designs, all using whatever scraps of fabric or thread she could scrounge up. Of all of the things that she could have used her limited energy and resources toward, she chose a handbag. And of all of the things that might have survived her trip to and from the gulag, and then her later travels around the Soviet Union and abroad, the tote bag survived. No recordings of her singing are known to exist, but the tote bag remained with her until she died and was preserved by one of her sons for years afterward.

*****

I'm not a fan of the NFL. I think that football is boring, and not just boring compared to a real sport like hockey, but super-long meeting with a monotone presenter kill-me-now BORING. I think that NFL cheerleading degrades women (not that anyone cares about that). I think that NFL owners are either greedy cowards or cowardly greedy people (noun for greedy person--anyone?) for failing to stand up to our ridiculous President on the anthem-kneeling why-is-this-even-an-issue issue. But my biggest objection to the NFL and all its works and pomps is the clear handbag rule, about which I haven't decided yet which is more astonishing:

• That the NFL has the nerve to demand that women expose the contents of their handbags not just to security screening (a necessary evil, I suppose) but to public scrutiny.  Not even scrutiny, because to scrutinize is to examine carefully, and you don't have to look that carefully to see through a damn plastic bag. 
• OR that so many women still attend games, carrying their clear plastic NFL-branded handbags, paying for the privilege of being insulted by the National Football League.

Men and women are different. I'm perfectly fine with according men their privileges (no, not THAT kind of privilege), as long as women can have theirs. My privileges are few but treasured: I park my car in the garage, and not in the driveway. I'm not responsible for pest control. And my handbag is sacred.

*****

The Kate Spade bag arrived, and I've been carrying it for a few weeks now. And because I couldn't get it out of my mind, I also bought the little Coach bag. The Kate Spade is a little nicer, and it's a light color, so I don't carry it when it rains. And it rains all the time. So it's not quite true to say that I've been carrying it for a few weeks; more like I've carried it two or three times during the last few weeks. But they're both beautiful and practical bags that accommodate everything I need for any day not spent in Siberia or Kolyma.

Never say never; that's what I always say. Or almost always, because I guess you should never say always either. My ten-year-old self would never have believed me if I'd gone back 40 years to tell her that when she grew up, she'd not only carry a handbag every day, but that handbags would be among her favorite things. I still wish I had more pockets, but I'll always have a pocketbook.