Commentary: Speak softly, but carry a big purse

Lee and I used to travel a lot, and I found a perfect travel purse with pockets for absolutely everything, even a slot for a collapsible fan for the tropics.

Places for pens, eyeglasses, camera, phone (as if I use a phone), passport, maps, a Michelin Guide, meds, wallet, makeup, snack, address book, novel — anything you could possibly want to carry with you for a day of sightseeing.

The thing is, I want to carry everything with me when I’m not traveling. Except possibly the Michelin and the fan.

For travel, I put my big purse and book and documents into a diaper bag, which really has a lot of pockets!

I am a little person who is a big-purse person.

So I carry my old washable travel purse — with the slash-guard shoulder strap and zipper lock — all the time. Or, I did.

I so admire women who change bags when they change outfits.

I looked through my collection of purses the other day, thinking it’s time for me to show some class (if it didn’t all shrivel from neglect, relative to my transition to a comfort-clothes wardrobe).

I have a lovely brown-and-black woven bag, virtually new, though I bought it years ago. I have assorted black purses — even an elegant, thin, lady-like purse. I also have a shabby-chic brown bag that looks like you could put a buffalo in it. Disappointing. Not one of them has enough pockets.

You could say purses “grew” on me.

Remember when all we needed to carry were a pen, a comb, a ChapStick and a dime to call home? In the early 1950s, felt “envelope” purses accommodated those things. Small and flat, they came in a zillion colors.

Remember basket purses? You put in your pen, comb, lipstick, little address book and wallet, and tied a small scarf around one edge of the handle for whimsy. In our peasant blouses and our skirts with a dozen petticoats, we looked like we were headed for the picnic in the musical “Oklahoma!”

Do you remember big vinyl, draw-string shoulder bags? There was almost enough room for my school notebook in those. If a bottle of ink leaked, I could scrub the purse clean with cleanser.

Last time I went shopping with granddaughter Sally — a little person who is not a big-purse person — she was looking for a big purse. Sally, a lawyer in Charleston, wanted a shoulder bag with enough room for her laptop and her legal files. On the East Coast, I gathered, such bags were common goods then, but in SoCal, not so much.

Do you remember when some men carried purses? I wondered how they’d gotten along without them for all the years!

Men put their cell phones in their shirt or front pants pocketsand their comb and wallet in the back pockets. Or they wear those dowdy (although functional) cargo pants.

Hmm. What I need is a cargo purse!

I tried a jacket like my friend Annie’s that she uses instead of a purse. Mine had 25 pockets, and when I filled them with the contents of my purse, I felt like a pack mule. (Returned it.)

Then I followed a Groupon option and ordered a red purse with all sorts of hiding places. How could I not have a red purse?! Red is my color!

It has three sections, two with magnetic closures and one with a zipper for the stuff you don’t want anyone to steal. That section has plenty of pockets. But . . .

Although it looked really perky in the photos, in person it looks like it needs to be starched and ironed. The two outside sections with magnetic closures flop open, and the middle zipper goes three quarters of the way around the purse and is hard to zip against the slouchy sides.

So here’s the lesson. Your online order might be a really good deal, but you could get a red purse with lots of pockets that simply breaks your heart.

I wonder if my trusty travel purse comes in red . . .

Author LIZ SWIERTZ NEWMAN lives in Corona del Mar.