What she carried

 Tonight, looking for a photograph I knew I had only recently put away somewhere, I opened the drawer of my aunt's dresser and found her pocketbook, which I'd forgotten in the more immediate business of closing her life.  The photo search instantly abandoned, I brought the purse out and began to go through it, thinking at first only to keep important documents (if any) and sort the rest.  But as I pulled out its effects, the discoveries within drew a picture of Aunt Vi that made me smile, and then wonder.

One's purse, after all, is the catch-all of our personalities and practices, so individually, so personally it characterizes us.  We might choose the outward appearance of one carrier over another, on one day or another, to match an outfit or suit an occasion, but the inside contents will always remain pretty much the same.  We carry what we need; we carry what we are.

Women's purses are sort of like men's pockets, only different.  They are more private, for one thing.  They contain the necessities of both genders, of course...wallet, keys, handkerchief (if we are of that age), change, perhaps the latest credit receipt, and probably a cell phone.  But women carry so much more; their necessities go beyond the businesslike chambers above to include not only the ways to get in, out, and hold of, but also the ways to be what we are...and often what other people need and are, too.

As I thought about this, I imagined the story that my aunt's purse would tell about who she was.  Pushing away (for now) its adjacent thought...what would my purse tell about me?...I began to put the pieces of her possessions together as if it were a puzzle I could construct.

First, the outside open pocket:  her clip-on sunglasses, essential for facing the brightness of a day as her eyes grew more dim; her plastic raincap, to pull out in such emergencies as a sudden drizzle. An address book, a bit ragged from thumbing.  In the zippered pocket, a comb, of course, a pack of throat lozenges, and a small key it took me a minute to recognize...the key to the jewelry box she kept on her dresser, though I doubt it had ever been locked.

There was a wallet, certainly, with a few dollars and coins for the weekly hairdresser and manicurist appointment.  There were the usual ID's, the first of which was the non-drivers identification card we'd applied for when they first moved here three months ago.  It made me think of its predecessor, the full drivers license from her previous home state; a clerk of which  state had obliviously renewed it, although my aunt, at the counter in front of her, had to ask for help from the man behind her to find the line to sign her name and besides, she had wisely given up driving years before.  How we laughed about that!  "Well," she rejoined, "at least people will know who I am."

Behind it were two copies of a social security card, the topmost one issued with her married name, and the undermost issued her originally on today's date, actually, in 1936.  Being an accountant by trade, she kept her paper copies carefully...indeed, there is not a crease on the original, though the paper has understandably grayed some.

Her health insurance cards (unlike my own) likewise showed no distress, though she must have pulled them out for twenty or more appointments a year over the last thirty.   A credit card, a privilege card from the Hallmark store, her also-newly-minted voter registration card, and her vision-surgery cards took up the remaining slots.

Except...stuck in a side slot was a yellowed plastic wallet folder with photographs:  showing from one side my grandparents (her parents) in their 1956 passport picture, taken for their first trip abroad, and from the other side, my cousin Nancy, her godchild, in a school picture I'm pretty sure, shining her characteristic smile across the decades.

It was a curious, almost portentous, time to find Nancy there, as she had passed away two years ago on Christmas day. This portrait reminded me of the happier, younger, healthier years of her life among us.  How hard her parents worked to bring her those years, how essential she had become to the liveliness and determination of all of us, in some inexplicable but assuredly felt way or another.

Between those photos, there was a third, a small snapshot of another niece, my cousin Donna, in her habit, probably taken when she entered her order, also smiling broadly.  Certain and composed, it was clearly a souvenir of how much Aunt Vi had enjoyed attending the ceremony of her initiation in St. Louis, and the time they'd had in that city.  As in fact she had enjoyed every one of our ceremonies, wherever they were, whatever they were, over the years.

Under the photos, two charms...the encrypted penny her brother had passed to her, "so she wouldn't ever run out of money", and a coin minted by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; she must have visited that shrine long ago in New York.  And by them you would recognize her two priorities for security...comfort and faith.

Under the wallet, a small Swiss army knife, for who knows what emergency (well, it did have a nail file), and a small flashlight for dark restaurants.  At the bottom, a piece of white coral, shaped like an angel and encased in clear acrylic, seemed an obvious keeper.

But her wallet wasn't really the first thing I had removed from the purse..excuse me, pocketbook  (as in, where is my pocketbook?  make sure I have my pocketbook...George, hold my pocketbook!) as I delved into the main compartment.

It was the small clear box that went everywhere with her. On any trip, to the grocery down the block or to Florida down the coastal road, you could be sure she'd ask, "Do you want a TicTac?" Yes, she did often find her mouth in need of refreshment, and so assumed that surely someone else in the car did, too.  I learned after a while, to my relief, that the offer wasn't, in fact, insinuating anything about one's breath.  She just wanted to make sure that the others were comfortably driven, too.