Can We Please Talk about Handbags?

When I was in high school, I made a conscious decision that I wanted to be the sort of girl who wore scarves. So I began collecting them, and wearing them, and making them mine. I'm not sure what I thought was so desirable about Girls Who Wore Scarves, but I do know that I amassed quite the collection of silky prints, embroidered wonders, and large squares of woven Indian patterns that I still wear to this day. So it wasn't a bad decision, all in all, especially considering some of the other fashion choices I made in the early 1980s.

(Bluejeans so tight they required zippers at the ankles, anyone? Multiple pairs of socks, of different colors, layered over each other? Mall bangs?)

ANYHOO...

The point is that I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing simply to make a fashion ultimatum for oneself and stick to it.

The grown-up version of the Scarf Desire: I have long wanted to be the sort of woman who had lovely lovely handbags -- and yet I have not managed to pull the trigger on become a Handbag Woman. (Not to be confused with Bag Lady, obviously.)

I don't mean snazzy little evening clutches bejeweled with Swarovski crystals, although those are certainly luscious.

I mean everyday bags. Leather hobos, and fruit-colored buckle-bedecked totes, and sober creations with men's suiting houndstooth trim, and so on. I want to be the sort of woman who has a few GREAT bags from which to choose on a given morning, depending on my mood.

Of course, that would require several things.

First, I would need the time to repack a bag every morning. Given that there are days when I can't even dry my hair before leaving the house, this may be a pipe dream. (You think I'm kidding? Last week, several locks of my hair froze solid on the 7-minute walk from parking lot to office.)

Second, I'd have to find the money to buy said bags. Even if I eschew the heavy-hitting brands, this would require a not insignificant investment.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, this would mean I could actually FIND a handbook or three with which I can fall in love.

And this, in fact, is the biggest problem.

For example: I currently have a sweet little cordovan colored number, just the right size for my everyday stuff, but its straps are not quite long enough. What, please tell me, is the point of a shoulder bag whose straps are too short to make it over the stay-puff marshmallow arms of your winter coat? If I wanted to carry my bag in my hands, I wouldn't have popped out two children who need their hands held in every parking lot in the state, thereby rendering my hands permanently too full to carry anything else.

I have a red-leather sack-shaped bag that worked well for toting a book a a few other essentials while teaching in Italy and Greece one summer -- but it's more bookbag than fashionable accessory.

I have a gorgeous pink-and-white plaid Ralph Lauren leather tote, large enough to serve as a diaper bag (the purpose for which it was purchased) -- but it suffers from the too-short shoulder bag strap problem. Also, having successfully gotten my children past the formula, spare clothes, diapers, changing pad, diaper cream, bottles, urp cloth, bib, binkie and rattle stage, I am sort of into the smaller bags right now.

I have one perfect bag: a cream of celery colored Hobo given to me by my best friend since forever as a milestone birthday present. Its strap is just the right length; the bag is the perfect size; the leather is dreamy; the color is fun; it is everything I love. Except that I feel silly carrying a summer-colored bag in December in Michigan, and so it languishes in my closet 9 months of the year.

And so, I carry this as a dreamy dream. My desire to be a woman with lovely bags haunts me every time I see a friend with a bag I love. I have two such friends. You would think it would be easy to ask them where they got their lovely bags, and that would be the first step towards fulfilling the dream. But I don't.

I suspect this is because a little part of me is afraid to ask. What if I ask, and then I find a bag that completes me, and I am afraid to spend that much money? Or I buy it and then accidentally leave the house one morning in my pj's because I've spent so much time lovingly arranging the contents of my handbag?

You think a person couldn't do such a thing? Someday I'll tell you the story of the woman I know whose toddler threw up just as she was finishing getting ready to go teach a sewing class, and so she frantically cleaned up the floor and the toddler, tossed together all of the supplies for her class, deposited the toddler on his father's lap, slipped on her pumps, dashed out the door, made it to the shop on the stroke of 7:00 when the class was supposed to start, walked in the door, and made a bee-line past the entire class and straight to the back room where she desperately looked around for anything at all that she could put on over her slip. Which was all that she was wearing on her bottom half. She was not me, but I was there to witness the incident. So I know what can happen when one is desperately trying to wrangle children and get onesself out the door in the morning. Something's gotta' give. And that something just might be your own clothes. Having once picked up children from daycare in my slippers, because I didn't notice that I wasn't wearing shoes until I was walking across the snowy parking lot, I live in fear of this truism. It is not unreasonable to suspect that a truly great handbag might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Or at least, sends the camel to work half dressed.

Or what if the new, gorgeous leather confection faces the fate of the ugly red bookbag? In which, last month, I confess I found a completely dessicated clementine, covered with a fine sage-green velvety mold. The horror.

Perhaps a woman whose handbag contents regularly includes matchbox cars, packets of crackers, the backing of stickers ("littering is bad, Mama; here, I don't have a pocket"), a squishy rubber gecko, or a few cheese sticks just in case, doesn't deserve to have a lovely purse.

Or perhaps she just needs to get in the habit of putting all such detritus into a ziplock bag, so as to save the lining of her lovely leather accessory.

Do tell: are you a purse lady? And if so, how do (did) you manage that with preschoolers?

*****
And if you want to read what I really think about some children's books, check out my whine today on Secret Spineless Whine. Amy and Marinka actually asked me to produce a whine to feature!