Rosie's first purse

No longer after Rosie began walking around in her baby-soft-leather pink, Capezio high top shoes, she let me know she wanted a purse. I guess I used purses in those days but I don't remember paying attention to purses.  Rosie saw her father's female relatives, especially her paternal grandmother and paternal aunt the medicdal doctor, a lot in her second and third years because I was separated from her father and he had, naturally, frequent visits. He often would pick her up for his court ordered visits but hand over the childcare to his mother and sister, who were mostly delighted to enjoy the darling pumpkin our Rosie was.

I had no idea what happened in the time she spent with her father and his kin. I was careful not to pry about what she did with them. Our divorce was acrimonious but I really did my best not to smack talk to her about her daddy. I did used to say he was cuckoo in the nuckoo, a nonsense line I made up. I thought she would just think I was being silly. He must have pumped her about me, however, because he brought up that cuckoo in the nuckooo, or had his lawyer bring it up. Geez. I had even discussed that way of referring to him with my psychologist. It seemed harmless. I am digressing.

I brought up the fact that for the years of our bitter divorce, Rosie saw her paternal female relatives at least a couple times a week.  Maybe she got the idea that she needed a purse from them. Or maybe she got it from seeing me with one, although I have no memory of using a purse.

I have already written that she and I often took walks in the winter in the suburban mall near our suburban mall. I also shopped. I did not limit our walks to the mall walking strips in front of shops. I thought she liked experiencing the changing lights, colors and displays inside the big department stores. I sometimes would make a game of pushing her through closely arranged clothing racks, letting her experience the sensation of cloth swooshing over her face and body.  I don't know what she thought of that. She was not yet doing much talking then.

So a day game when she let me know she wanted a purse. No problem! We went to the mall and to the 'big' department store. I remember parking just outside the childrens department, for I had assumed she would want to pick a children's purse.

It quite surprised me when, as I chattered about the little girl purses in the children's department, Easter-like purses, she squinched up her face, shook her head no and said "No!" and then she gestured me to follow her to the women's department, then the women's purses.

I had said, extravagantly, that she could have any purse she chose. When I said it, I had envisioned an inexpensive kiddie purse.

She knew exactly where the adult women's purse department was, leading me stalwartly towards it, bobbing and weaving between varioius racks and displays that were much taller than her. I marveled at her navigation. And i realized "She comes here shopping with others besides me, people who are much more serious about shopping than me."

Say, I wonder if my daughter's predilection for fashion, endless new clothing and accessories, began in thos eearly shopping outings with her paternal womenfolk. She didn't get that proclivity from me but I have thought, sometimes, that people are born with that trait. My baby brother has the same trait. He'll drop money on a new designer shirt when it will mean he has to pay part of his rent a little late. I don't get that. I don't get interest in designer stuff. I never did. But Rosie always did. She was fussing about clothing and acesssories before she could talk.

So we get to the women's department and she goes straight to the purse she wanted. It was an adult-sized, hot pink, fabric clutch that had a long pink wrist clasp and closed with a zipper. I thought it garish. Tacky. She thought it was beautiful. I had said "whichever purse you want" and that puffy pink clutch, which was at least ten inches long and about five inches wide, was inexpensive.

Hell yeah, I bought it for her. And it was worth it to see her proudly dangling it off her wrist as we walked out of the store.

She took that purse with her everywhere for a long time. She kept stuff in it, too. I never understood her choices. She didn't carry money or identification, which is what I have used purses for.  She kept a few crayons in there, a small mirror (also, I suspect, from the influence of her paternal female kin -- I have never, not once, carried a small mirror. goodness, what would I do with a mirror) and a hot pink comb that I never saw her use. She used that hot pink purse constantly. It grew dirty, then filthy and eventually it left our lives, although I don't recall its end.

What I recall, with pure joy, is the joy I felt when my tiny toddler marched from children's department to women's department, knowing exactly where she was going amidst the taller-than-her displays and knowing exactly what she wanted.

I didn't consider this back then, over 30 years ago, but as I write this, I wonder if she had spotted that hot pink purse while shopping with an aunt or a grandma. She didn't seem to ever want just any purse. She seemed to want that garish, hot pink purse that was about half her size. She was a very petite toddler. She is a very petite adult.

She has bird bones, like in that A.R. Ammons poem, City Lights. Sometimes, in my mind's eye, I still see her fine-boned features, her exquisite clavicle, her petite features.

I love her.  I find myself straining to see her now, as an adult, a thirty something, a professional, competent grown up. I never knew her as a grown up. I haven't seen her since she was a teenager.

WTF did I do to lose my only child?