Opinion

OPINION: GWEN FAULKENBERRY: Pondering the need for purse-purging

I have heard it said that you can tell a lot about a woman by the contents of her purse. Since it is purse-cleaning-out-time, I decided to conduct an introspective experiment and see what I might learn.

Mind you, I am not a woman who switches purses according to what matches an outfit, though sometimes I might like to be. I splurge on a purse I love, carry it till it is worn out, then change to a new one that is waiting in the wings from my bargain shopping adventures in designer purse land (where 75 percent off is still a splurge).

I dumped out my buttery leather Frye hobo bag onto the floor of my bedroom and thought briefly of striking a match to the pile, or shoveling it all into the trash. The same sensation comes over me every time I clean out a cabinet or closet or the attic. It's almost like it would be better not to know what mess is in there and have to deal with it. After all, if it has been in the bottom of my purse for a significant time, or anywhere else, and I have not used it or even thought about its existence, do I really need it? Can anything you forget about for that long "spark joy," as Marie Kondo insists should be the litmus test for things we decide to keep?

But being the sentimental, waste-not-want-not person I am, this thought does not linger. Instead I remember why I put jobs like these off as long as possible, because the only thing as hard as living with clutter is sifting through it all and getting rid of stuff.

The pile would remind you of Zora Neale Hurston's bags of miscellany, all dumped together in a single heap. A jumble of small things priceless and worthless. The trouble, sometimes, is telling the difference between those two descriptors.

But not at first. Empty candy wrappers are easily discarded. Two well-worn surgical masks. A beloved "I Read Dangerously" button picked up at a bookstore that I have no place for as I am no longer in my short hippie phase of carrying a canvas backpack with political/philosophical statement-making pinnery.

A bulletin from church with a message that seemed important. A fidget toy my daughter Stella found at the ball park. Pointless receipts. Off to the trash they all went.

The next phase was trickier. There was a small red onion, to my astonishment, beginning to sprout. A jog down memory lane took me back to sensory language day in Composition 1, on which I asked my students to use their five senses to write description.

More remains of the day surfaced along with the onion: a drawstring sachet of lavender, three sticks of Ceylon cinnamon, a stainless-steel fork.

Next there was a restaurant napkin with numbers on it, rattled off about voting in Arkansas by a friend who keeps that data in his head. Three medium binder clips (because essays). A ponytail holder and bobby pin. A Drive-By Truckers CD called "Southern Rock Opera" rendered useless since there is no CD player in my new-to-me car, and a family subscription for music streaming.

A basketball participation medal Stella disdains. A card from the Winthrop Rockefeller Center, the address ripped from an envelope of someone I need to thank, and a handwritten letter from Tom Courtway saying he's a fan of this column. I've kept it in my purse for two months because reading it over and over takes me away like Calgon to writer's nirvana.

All of this is out of my purse and sorted. Courtway's letter graduated to my desk; if said workspace is ever decluttered the letter will without question stay.

I needed to clean out my wallet too. This year I received I-don't-know-how-many letters from Blue Cross Blue Shield that contained insurance cards for my kids and me. Each letter explained that I should throw away the cards from before because they had number errors. The problem was that I somehow threw away the letters, keeping the cards, and then had no easy way of telling which ones were correct, so I stuffed them all into my wallet.

For the expulsion I made a wild guess which ones were accurate and chunked the rest, hoping the correct numbers were by now on record via technology at all of the different places we might use them.

The wallet is a microcosm of miscellany. There's a quote on crumbling paper from Thornton Wilder, a little letter on a sticky note from my dad, a tiny Hallmark card from my mom, pictures at various stages in my children's lives, checks, cash my kids have not yet pilfered, library card, voter registration card, Tech faculty ID card, credit cards, driver's license, concealed carry license, and a hilariously inappropriate business card I once found at random somewhere that makes me cackle every time I look at it.

There was also a line I recently read from "The Truelove" by poet David Whyte: The more vulnerable-making the endeavor, the more reflexive the limitation and the more redemptive the liberation. And two coupons for a free vanilla cone from Sonic that Stella won by reading a million books. I wavered on pitching these--none of us like vanilla--but in the end I could not, haunted by starving people everywhere.

After the wallet was kempt, the rest was relatively easy to load into my pristine turquoise leather shoulder bag by Hobo. I have four colors of Burt's Bees lip shimmer to which my lips are addicted; they get a pocket of their own. Same for pens. A little makeup bag that contains a brush, mascara, hand lotion, and a bottle of hand sanitizer. And a tin that used to house my favorite German candies--anise--that I now pack with ibuprofen, Tylenol, an array of bariatric vitamins, and one dose each of the dailies: progesterone, estradiol, bupropion, and fluoxetine.

Sunglasses. Regular glasses. Keys. A cloth mask, stuffed into an outside zipper compartment; iPhone slid into an open outside pouch.

Satisfaction filled my soul when I finished the task. I felt so orderly and proud. I always think, when I do these things, that I might turn over a new leaf. Maybe I'll start ironing my clothes before it's time to put them on. Make my bed every day when I get out of it like my mother taught me. Perhaps put gas in my car at a quarter tank, as my dad instructs, instead of taking risks with running out. But the motivation rarely sticks.

Anne of Green Gables said tomorrow is fresh with no mistakes in it, but for me that freshness only lasts till I get out of bed in the mornings. Sometimes not even that long. Pondering my experiment, I shudder to think what the contents of my purse say about me. Privilege? Neuroses? Disorganization? Laziness? A literary bent?

I think, like Martin Luther King hoped for his children, I'd rather be judged on the content of my character. And yet our things and our habits say something more about us than something as superficial and completely beyond our control as the color of our skin.

There's a connection between the things we carry in our hands and hearts. Tim O'Brien wrote that we carry tangibles but also intangibles that have their own mass and specific gravity. Emotional baggage like grief, terror, love, and longing.

I think instead of deep-diving into a Freudian analysis of what the items in my purse imply about me, I'm going to use this experiment to augment my appreciation for the gravitas of the intangible. Seen or unseen, arranged fastidiously or not, humans are bundles of paradoxes. We all carry a lot. And none of us knows everything the other is carrying.

Sure, there are things we need to take out and deal with. Maybe things to let go of, or things we need to cherish more than we do. But intangibles chosen or not can be heavy and affect a person's ability to walk through life.

We fulfill the law of Christ when we bear the burdens of our fellow humans. It is our duty. Our honor. U2 said it poignantly in their song: We're one, but we're not the same. We get to carry each other.

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Gwen Ford Faulkenberry is an English teacher and editorial director of the non-partisan group Arkansas Strong. (http://arstrong.org) Email her at [email protected].


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