The Baggage We Tote Around

In this phase of my life, I sometimes find that I am a bag lady. I often spend an entire day away from my house in meetings with other writers, in workshops and webinars, and in many other activities. For example, last Saturday, I attended a writing workshop from 9:00 am until 4:00 pm. And yesterday I was a poll worker from 5:00 am until 8:00 pm—a longer day than normal, but so be it.

On days when I’m going to be away from home, I gather all the belongings I’ll need—my laptop, a notebook, lunch and drinks, and the newspaper or a magazine or my tablet in case I have downtime and want to read. This time of year, I’d better pack a coat as well. All this stuff gets crammed into a tote bag—hence the reason I call myself a bag lady.

Recently, I’ve been using an old tote of my mother’s. I have a nice black leather tote, which looks more professional. But it’s heavy and the handles sometimes fall off. I have lightweight bags, but they are getting pretty worn (I’ve sewn the strap back on one of them with ugly brown stitches, and I no longer trust the straps on another bag) and are too summery for this time of year.

So my mother’s tote it is. It’s a good quality bag, with leather handles and trim, a heavy upholstery fabric, a nice lining, and a zipper pocket inside.

But it is definitely no longer in style.

I think I gave it to Mother one Christmas back in the 1990s. The label inside the bag says it was made for the Smithsonian Institute, and I recall doing a lot of my holiday shopping from the Smithsonian catalog back in the day. Perhaps it was in 1995, the year I did all my shopping from catalogs while sitting in the back of my minivan while my daughter took horseback riding lessons.

In any event, my mother was not hard on the bag, and it was still in good shape after her death. I recall her using it some, but not a lot.

On one of my visits shortly after Mother’s death, my father and I cleaned out her clothes from the closets in all three bedrooms of their house. He kept handing me things, saying, “Here. Can you use this?” And, “Take this. It’s brand new.”

I took a few items—a sporty jacket, a raincoat, a couple of purses, and this tote bag. Most of the items I’ve since given to Goodwill. My mother and I were close to the same size, but not exactly. Plus, many of her things were too far out of style to be wearable. And our tastes were not always similar.

But I kept the tote bag. And recently, I decided to start using it.

When I carry the bag, I think of my mother. I remember her in good times and in bad. The good times include her using this or a similar bag for knitting projects, back when she knitted baby sweaters for grandchildren. The good times include her writing years, late in her life, when she joined Questors and won an essay contest for local writers.

The bad times include her last couple of years at home, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and before she moved into an assisted living facility. During those years, she wouldn’t leave the house without three purses or totes, all crammed full of her “necessities.” These necessities included wadded up tissues, little notebooks, saltine crackers, and whatever else caught her fancy. She carried a wallet, but it didn’t have any cash. She didn’t carry car keys, as she no longer had a driver’s license.

It drove my father crazy waiting for her to gather all her bags before she would go wherever they were going. He was always early everywhere, and he fretted she would make them late.

In those bad years, she didn’t use this tote (stuffed full, she might not have been able to carry it). But she had a purse about half this size made out of a similar fabric. Even that purse weighed a ton. And she carried two other purses as well. We could usually talk her into leaving most of her bags in the car when she reached their destination, and my father would carry her “real” purse (the one with the empty wallet) when they went places. But she wouldn’t leave home without all her bags.

When I use my mother’s tote, I am reminded of these and other events marking the passage of time. Of ability and disability. Of making the best of the time we have, each day that we are given. And of the baggage that everyone carries every day—most of it inside of us, and not in the bags we tote.

What baggage do you carry?