What's Your Bag?

What do the contents of your purse say about you?

The thought just dawned on my now, as I was rifling through it in search of my tiny (and outdated) iPod Shuffle. I couldn’t help but smile when I came across some tidbits reminding me of my current State of Motherhood.

At present, my purse contains:

1 package travel baby wipes
2 Hot Wheels cars
1 little farmer figurine
1 underused tube of lipstick
countless grocery- and liquor-store receipts
1 winning scratchy lotto ticket
portable sewing kit
cell phone and earpiece + charger
1 wallet low on funds
1 pen

So, if a detective were to examine my purse, what would he conclude?

1) The wipes and toys are an obvious sign that I’m the mother of a diaper-wearing child, most likely a boy.

2) The untouched lipstick, lotto ticket and receipts are an indication that my outings normally consist of getting staples for the family home. (And really, liquor is a staple when you are the parent of a kidlet.) Any other ventures outside the home are rare and difficult to justify when there is (so much) laundry to fold.

3) However, the lipstick, pen and sewing kit are signs that I am ready for an emergency, such as painting my face to distract others from the food stains I got on my pants from feeding the boy earlier in the day. The pen comes in handy for jotting down reminders on the abovementioned receipts, which also double as a makeshift notepad. I used to scribble obscure yet catchy song titles on these bits of paper. These days, it’s recipe ingredients or arguably effective remedies for sleepless babies.

4) The winning lotto ticket is also my way of living dangerously. Not only am I possibly throwing away my $2 on a scratchy, I’m also making a gunky mess of the kitchen table while I scrape away at my ticket with an old penny. Nail-biting suspense in a concentrated three-minute sitting! (Which is, frankly, an eternity when you are the mother of a babytoddler.)

5) The phone and earpiece show that being in touch is a necessity for me. The Facebook and Sudoku apps on my phone are an indication that mindless distractions are equally necessary.

6) The empty wallet doesn’t need much clarification. See Point #1.

Compare this to the purse I used to carry five years ago. It was half the size of my current one. It even warranted the name “purse.” It was cute and small and fit snugly under my arm. Shoot, on a good day, I could even cram my lunch inside my purse! The one I own now can justifiably be called a handbag. It’s a big, pleather cavity of a bag that flaps next to my body as I dart into the grocery store. (Where else?)

My old purse always contained the following:

emergency subway tokens
1 fresh pack of gum
1 novel
1 emery board
at least two lipsticks
gym membership
1 wallet, with cash in it

Funny how a purse morphs and modifies along with the purse-owner. It seems like an organic process for such an inanimate object, like an ever-changing sidekick.

Filmmaker Coleen Hubbard took this observation one step further and made a documentary called, The Contents of Her Purse. Check out the trailer here: http://www.contentsofherpurse.com/.

Hubbard interviewed dozens of women of all ages about what they carry around with them. She came to the conclusion that as women get older, the beauty-enhancing products in their purses are replaced with maintenance- and health-related items. In fact, a ninetysomething interviewee revealed that her purse contained her hearing aid battery, handicapped parking sticker and denture cream.

While I haven’t reached that milestone, yet, I take some comfort in knowing that my purse will be with me to help me lug around these eventual necessities.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll dig out that tube of lipstick, just for the hell of it.