Carry On.

Three weeks after my passage to Arabia, I finally righted a bit of personal negligence—an action prompted by a coworker’s comment: “That must be your travel purse; it sure doesn’t look like an Allison purse.”

Correct.

The accessory in question is made of brown nylon with pockets inside of pockets, notches on top of notches, and zippers that zipper up pockets and notches. Attached on either side with carabiner clips is a canvas strap that quickly detaches for what I can only describe as an unforeseeable event. It is functional beyond words and being that functional is not in my personal dictionary this is an incongruity that cannot be sustained.

Because I am lazy (not too busy), I started the process by simply stuffing the smaller purse (which was also serving as a wallet) into a larger, infinitely more stylish purse. A couple of days later, the carabiners’ purpose became evident and I removed the strap—satisfactorily, yet only minimally lightening my load.

After my second attempt at conducting a transaction with an item that wasn’t currently in my temporary wallet, I dug my permanent wallet from my semi-permanent, pre-vacation purse (not to be confused with my post-vacation purse) and shoved that in as well. And, to cover all other possibilities, I grabbed the pre-vacation purse and tossed it in the back seat of my car. This gave me strange comfort, by the way.

Finally, yesterday, I relocated the entire contents of my travel purse to assigned spaces in my bag du jour. And, in doing so, I found this:

Oh! I momentarily forgot about this. I’ve been carrying it in every variation of a handbag I’ve owned since September 8, 2000. It remains folded exactly as it was when I first pocketed it. But how it came into my life is a story that belongs to others: two supremely cool people whose happiness, I believe, brings me good luck.