Purses

I need a new purse. My current bag is an over-the-shoulder or strap-in-your-hand hybrid, and it doesn’t do either well. So I tend to leave it flopped on the floor wherever I go, and something invariably falls out of its outside pocket. Like the car keys.

But to buy a new purse is to condone this particular accessory. And I don’t. I don’t even like the name. Never have. You can’t say purse without squinching up your lips. Purse. It rhymes with terse. A purse is what a crotchety old woman carries looped over her arm, held tight. Like a weapon. Or a suitcase-sized satchel hauled about by a harried mother who needs to have at her immediate disposal any number of items: tissues, pens, a sweater, mirror and comb, three shades of lipstick, a daily planner from 2005, a dented half-drunk water bottle, and a three-course meal complete with silverware.

I do not want to be either of these women. I want to be footloose and purse-free, able to shove my driver’s license, credit card, and $20 in one pocket and chapstick in the other and walk out the door.

To carry more implies that others depend on me: “Don’t look at me! Carry your own damn Kleenex.”

And to carry a handbag looped over one arm ties up that arm from useful activity. Ever tried steering a bike with a bag dangling from your arm?

My purse-carrying days began slow and grudgingly. In my 30s, I purchased a fanny pack and stuffed it with my wallet, chapstick, and a checkbook, Post-It notepad and a pen. Then I found a cute canvas over-the-shoulder carpet-bag-looking tote at a funky store in Ouray, Colorado, and decided it looked more dignified. I put in it the contents of my fanny pack, plus a newly acquired cellphone and Palm Pilot.

And then I had a child.

My purse became an Eagle Creek backpack-slash-diaper-bag. We could have survived for a week on a deserted island with what was stored in that bag, and probably for two weeks if you didn’t mind pinching cracker crumbs from the seams.

Now that Sam is almost 8, I’m back down to a normal-sized purse. I bought a leather Coach backpack-style version a few years ago, thinking that the leather and the designer name would give the illusion of respectability.

But it soon became spattered with milk (from baby bottles smuggled into movie theaters and restaurants) and required too much maneuvering in winter to get it over both shoulders while wearing a Parka. So I ditched it for the over-the-shoulder or strap-in-your-hand model. I purchased it for too much money from Title IX Sports, the athletic-mom outfitter. In my mind this made it less of a purse and more of a “lifestyle accessory.”

But it too is proving annoying. And I am forced to realize that I am the dispenser of Kleenex and Purell, money and gum, chapstick and cough drops. And when my cellphone rings, I need to be able to find it. What if it’s the school nurse calling? Or the police?

Perhaps I just need to give my handbag a new name. Like Seinfeld, I’m not carrying a purse. I’ve got a “European Carry-All.”

And with it slung over my shoulder, I’ll pretend I’m walking the Champs Elysees in Paris.

“Vous faire a besoin d’un tissue, ma petite enfant?”