Continuing with my Death Cleaning, this morning practical reasons moved me to attack my overflowing cupboard of handbags.
When I visited my mother for the last time, she was 91. I looked around her house at all the stuff and asked, do you want me to help you distribute some of this? Who will take care of it all later? She replied with a flick of her fingers, as though she was shooing away an annoying insect, and a noise came out of her mouth like „fffttt“, accompanied by a who-cares eye-roll.
After her death, her fourth husband recounted to me, in dribs and drabs, everything he had to get rid of. I don’t remember many details, but I do remember something about 73 belts. I can remember some of Harding‘s belts from the 50s. They were craftsmanly works of art of softest Italian leather.
But my handbag situation is another kettle of fish. This is a picture of what I plan to dispose of today, and I can’t bear to throw them into the big iron clothes drum without telling a bit of their stories.
There are three handbags I purchased at a cosmetic chain store decades ago because they were the cheapest and lightest I could find: the little magenta, the black one lined with Magenta, and the little red one. I presume they were made in China but they were very durable and hung on forever and ever. I liked the small ones because they were so lightweight and didn’t cause pain in my conducting arm from carrying them; and the large black one lined with Magenta was just the right as a carry-on airline bag. When they began to fall apart, I taped them, sewed and mended them as long as I could, until they became so ratty that I was embarrassed to carry them.
As I emptied the black one I found a folded napkin stamped with the icon of a Costa cruise ship. Apparently I had taken it with me on my last attempt to flee Stuttgart to the Mediterranean — I believe it was fall 2019, just before Corona broke out.
At some point I stopped carrying leather bags, because they were too heavy and I couldn’t wash them, and chose instead sporty types of bags with lots of pockets and zippers to organize my little stuff. These were not immediately available in Stuttgart; it took some time for that style to reach us here. I carried the sporty red Vauda bag for some time, in spite of the handles being sewn on at an angle that made the bag tip away from me. Later, I discovered that the company Vauda is run by a woman, produces only in my region, and ecologically correct. In one of its pockets I found a little cloth for cleaning glasses from Le Lanchon, an optician in Rouen. It was from one of my first cruises — a cruise from Paris along the Seine to the mouth of the river and back. It left me mouth agape with all of the natural beauty, the birds, Monet’s Giverny, works by Impressionists hanging in every little museum... Being on the water and looking at land was a side of France that I had never experienced, and I was intoxicated by the natural and artistic beauty throughout the whole trip, as I’m sure the Impressionists were, too. And it was in a short stop at Rouen that I found the optician Le Lanchon and purchased the glasses frames made by the woman optician that I wear today.
It pains me to dispose of the shabby little gray bag. But I’ve carried it so often it’s almost falling apart and goddammit I can’t carry it with me into the grave! Graves are just not big enough. It is a bag from Hong Kong from the World Music Days held there in 2007. I was working on my dissertation at the time and had discovered that scholars living in Germany who present their findings at international conferences could have their trips subsidized by the German government (by the DAAD, the same agency that brought me to Stuttgart in 1980). Surprised, I said to my husband, „Look we could travel anywhere! Where would you like to go?“ He thought a moment and then replied, „What about China?“ And so I found that conference and we flew to Hong Kong.
It was a magnificent trip. It was sponsored by the Asian Composers League and most of the composers there were from the area. They knew all the ins and outs of problems composing and performing Western music as Asians in Asia. They also arranged junket after the Congress it took us to Chengdu where we visited the music conservatory—I think they produced 30 composers every year, and they all got work—, Xi'an with its famed Terra Cotta Army, and many other sites whose names I have forgotten. We stayed at amazing locales. One was some military garrison where we ate in the military canteen, I guess they got a cheap deal for lodging there. The food was off the charts. Of course spending several days in Hong Kong was for us, as for anyone, an experience you don’t quickly forget. In Hong Kong there is a shopping store — I forget its name — with very inexpensive products from the Peoples Republic. In that department store I bought most of the warm long underwear I still wear today, 14 years later. I also finally bought the kind of warm gloves I had been looking for for Stuttgart‘s winters, but had not been able to afford. Beautiful black, wool-lined leather gloves, soft as a lamb. When I return to Stuttgart in the winter of 2007-2008, I wore the gloves a couple of times and it must’ve been the second or third time, I lost one of them. What can you do with one glove? I’ve saved the remaining glove all these years in the hope of finding a practical solution to that question. But after all this time I guess I’ll put it in the clothing drum with all of the bags.
And to all of the bags that served me so well for so many decades, and to the countless unknown — probably Chinese — hands that made most of them, I say gassho.
Fare thee well.
(Still got plenty of bags with more stories.)