"Pocketbooks" by Sheryl Boris-Schacter
An essay
“I’m out of food and need to go to the market.”
“Mom, I live 250 miles away. I’m happy to order groceries online and have them delivered to you.”
“No, I want to pick them out myself. They know me at Waldbaum’s and are always so helpful, especially Ben.”
I wondered about Ben, someone I never met, and when he became the patron saint of elderly Jewish women. I felt like hugging the guy. “Mom, how about calling Howie? He’s only ten minutes away. He could take you shopping.”
“He’s busy at work. I don’t want to bother him.”
Instead of reminding her that like my brother, I, too, was busy at work, I paused to consider what I could say that wouldn’t sound antagonistic or cheeky, “Would you like me to call him and ask him to help you solve this?”
“Yes. And don’t forget to call me later.” The phone clicked without a goodbye or thank you. She hung up before I could ask how her head was healing after last week’s fall. I suppose I could ask later during the second obligatory phone call. I got adept at saying almost nothing of consequence twice a day.
Why was it okay for me to “bother” my brother Howie at work, but not her? Was this the outcome she wanted from the call all along? I sat at my desk for a few minutes, sometimes looking out the window, sometimes eyeing my interlaced hands. I sighed and picked up my phone. It was the call I had been dreading, the inevitable conclusion. “It’s time we moved Mom,” I said. “You can’t go running over there every time she falls or runs out of food because she’s afraid to leave her house. She can’t continue being taken by ambulance to the hospital. It’s become untenable. Unsafe. Do you agree?”
“Yeah, I know we have to do this. I feel bad,” Howie said. We sat quietly, together in different cities, alone with similar thoughts.
I slept in Mom’s den on the pull-out bed for the three nights prior to the move so I could help sort out her stuff, watch over her, and make sure she ate. Howie brought over boxes, and I got to work. Mom wanted to move the Limoges porcelain vases and Goebel Hummel figurines, pieces she had picked up on her travels with her second husband Herb, and antique cranberry glassware and teacups and saucers accumulated on weekend Long Island antique shopping trips with her first husband, our father.
I wrapped each ceramic piece for the journey half a mile down Middle Neck Road. I wished I could wrap Mom that easily. I wished I could feel confident she’d arrive in one piece and be just as content in a different apartment. There wasn’t any choice. Neither Howie nor I would consider having her move in with us, but I still felt sad for her, for us, for our future selves. Mom had been fine, until she wasn’t. Is that how this works? Just a few weeks earlier, she went food shopping and attended book group at the library and exercise class and Friday night services at the synagogue. And now her routines had to be upended as dementia took hold, the falls increased, and loneliness intensified.
Mom’s things–artwork, dishes, knickknacks–were all easy to address. But there were also mountains of clothing, shoes, and purses that needed to be assessed and whittled down. These felt much more personal to me. I wasn’t attached to any of Mom’s art, even the paintings that had hung on the walls of my childhood home in Baldwin. I was attached to the dresses Mom wore to our weddings, blouses she picked up on mother/daughter shopping trips, the purse she used on the family vacation in D.C. Mom was her clothing, her pocketbooks, her shoes.
I flung open the closet door and stepped in. The scents of perfume and lavender sachets hung in the air. I tied my hair back and soon learned that Mom’s everyday Louis Vuitton bag was far from her only one. I always knew it, of course, because I had seen other purses over the years. I just wasn’t aware of the extent of her pocketbook collection. Why would anyone need so many purses?
Whipping my head from side to side, I saw how different my relationship was to pocketbooks from Mom’s. Clearly, she loved them. I hated them. I loathed the weight, the keeping track of them, and making sure nobody snatched them from me. An added responsibility I didn’t want. But Mom carried a large, designer pocketbook as her everyday bag. It required her to hold an arm crooked at the elbow so the bag wouldn’t slip off. That couldn’t have been comfortable, either holding her right arm up or letting the heavy bag dangle from a hand. I witnessed her obsessing over its whereabouts, fretting over its contents, and digging around in it for an item that’s “in here somewhere.” It made me perspire.
Because of her bag selections, Mom never had both hands free. I wanted my hands free. It’s why the backpacks of my youth and the cross-body bags of my adulthood were the only viable choices. I guess this reflected my penchant for practicality and Mom’s inclination toward fashion. Whereas she posed her large Louis Vuitton bag on an unnaturally bent arm, I stuffed my pockets with glasses and tissues and car keys and credit cards and Vaseline. Mom carried a bulky checkbook and a bloated, matching wallet. The designer wallet was secured with a rubber band, since its fastener didn’t work anymore. And make-up needed to be at the ready in case she had to fix her face. Apparently, bulging pockets or leaving lipstick at home were unacceptable trade-offs for shoulder pain, arm cramps, and vigilance.
“Mom, why don’t you sit on the bed, and I’ll hold everything up for you to tell me whether you want it packed or given away,” I said.
“Okay,” she answered, although I wasn’t entirely sure she could do it. Make any decisions, assess things she’d owned for years.
The handbags alone numbered in the dozens, arranged on the shelf by color, many still clinging to yellowing price tags. I started with the black ones, moved on to the browns, and then ended with the other colors. The little girl who grew up in the Depression wearing holey shoes stuffed with newspaper and her sister’s hand-me-down dresses grew up to own more pocketbooks than I could count. There were clutch bags and envelope bags and shoulder bags and evening bags. I knew she was deciding to keep many more than she needed for her life going forward, but I didn’t fuss about it. As we made our way through the color coding, there was one bag that gave us both pause.
“I don’t know about that one, Sheryl. I bought it on a trip to Italy and hardly ever used it. But I did bring it recently to Rosalie’s grandchild’s wedding. It’s a Valentino and is worth a fortune today, I’m sure. The color’s gorgeous still.” Mom hesitated, thought for a second, then added, “I think you should have it.”
Although I didn’t share my mother’s taste in furnishings or décor, I often thought her clothes were stunning, even if I wouldn’t wear them myself. They just weren’t me. I started picturing her in a tasteful beige dress and heels, accessorized by this supple hot pink leather bag the size and shape of a Kindle with two gold one-inch metal balls for a clasp, a beige leather interior with a single zippered pocket, and a gold detachable link chain shoulder strap. We were both quiet, each imagining ourselves and each other with the same pink purse. Mom waxed nostalgic while I considered when I would wear it and whether my wanting to own something was connected or disconnected to my using it.
“I’d love it, Mom,” I said as I began a new pile, the pile of things I would take for myself from my mother’s home. The hot pink Valentino clutch was the first and last item in that pile. The bag sits on my closet shelf now, the gold link chain tucked discreetly inside. I like having it there, seeing it when I open the door, though I don’t know why. It remained unused for years until recently. Until I wore a dress without pockets to a wedding.
At the end of three days, the sorting, donating, and packing were done. It was my final night on the fold-out couch in the small den off my mother’s kitchen. I was about to turn off the light when Mom appeared at the threshold wearing only a matching salmon-colored bra and panty set. She looked around at her packed-up apartment with its naked walls, dozens of marked boxes, and artwork leaning against the few pieces of remaining furniture.
“Sheryl, where are we going tomorrow?” she asked.
My throat went dry, and I looked at Mom and wondered why she still wore lovely lace underwear sets instead of something cotton and practical and comfortable like I did. I thought about how she still cared about how she looked, even under her clothing, and I was willing to wager that the designer lace next to her skin made her feel like herself.
“We’re moving all your things to your new apartment at the assisted living we visited last week,” I said. “Do you remember Howie found a great place with loads of activities? You’ll make new friends, and you won’t have to worry about food anymore. Or driving. Or feeling lonely.”
“Oh, I remember now. But I don’t want to go.” Her eyes implored.
“I know, Mom. But it’ll be great. You’ll see.” She walked back into her bedroom for the last time.
It still breaks my heart to think about that exchange. Not only her growing confusion and dementia, but also her vulnerability and sense of trust in me that I had rarely seen. I always thought I wanted to experience those feelings from my mother, but now that I did, I can’t say that I liked them much. She was behaving like a nicer version of herself, like someone else’s mother. Like an inauthentic imposter. Not like Mom. My mother was the one who brought me anti-wrinkle cream when she visited and wondered aloud why I left clean dishes in the dishrack instead of returning them to the cabinets. I was despondent not only because I had to remove an eighty-six-year-old woman from her home, but also because I was disappointed, once more, in the mother I was given.
I had all of Mom’s belongings and their respective new places in my head, so the move went smoothly. The apartment was on a corner with lovely views and light. It had a large living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom. There was only a tiny area for making tea or storing ice cream in the freezer. Her new bedroom closet filled up quickly with the clothes and shoes and handbags she brought but never wore.
The Louis Vuitton purse sat vigil by Mom’s bedside, at the ready whenever she left the apartment. Out of habit and recalling her former life, she never left it behind. Like her lace lingerie, the oversized and overstuffed designer handbag was a lifeline connecting my mother to who she was before. Before dementia intruded. Before she depended on others. Like her mother before her, Mom’s pocketbook always hung from her crooked arm, simultaneously weighing her down and keeping her grounded. A constant in a life when all else changed.
About the author: During an academic career in Education, Sheryl Boris-Schacter bridged scholarship and practice with the publication of over twenty research-based journal articles and two nonfiction books: The changing relationship between principal and superintendent: Shifting roles in an era of educational reform (Jossey-Bass) and Balanced leadership: How effective principals manage their work (Teachers College Press). This essay is an adapted chapter from her first work of creative non-fiction: Revision: A Gender Memoir-in-Essays. A different chapter adaptation appears in the 2024 20th anniversary edition of The Tusculum Review.
Sheryl holds doctoral and master’s degrees from Harvard University. When not working on her newest project, a novel, from her home in the Hudson Valley, she travels, consults, does community volunteer work, gardens, hikes, cooks, collects kitschy salt and pepper shakers, and sweats her way through Zumba classes.
Touching and heartfelt. Enormously impactful. Loved reading this essay. Incredibly well-written. So many layers to a mother-daughter relationship!
This phase of life is something every parent and child struggle through, and she captured it with dignity and compassion.