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Introduction to Brandlady.com |
Bags
Carolynne (Lynne) McPherson, Contributing Writer M emories play like ripples in the pool of my mind. Some memory pools are shallow, whilst others are deep. Some form slow ripples, whilst others produce a rush of interconnected images. Throw the stone of a word into the pond and see what ripple of a memory it produces. What of the word, “bag”? What ripples does that produce? Bags, many bags. Large ones, small ones. Disposable. Keepsakes, Gifts. Old. New… The word works around in my mind and grabs the ripple a memory - the image of the very first bag that was truly mine. The memory of a little bag that opened my life. It arrived just after I turned five, covered in forgettable store paper wrap. My older sister had one just like it. So did my brother. Mine was just like theirs, but held the smell of newness. The bag meant I was now old, like my brother and sister. Not as old as Mum and Dad. I knew I could never be that old. Nevertheless, old enough to be as big as my brother and sister. The bag meant I was going to school. My bag was a Globite. Small, brown, constructed from cardboard and covered in textured plastic coating. The handle, which matched the brown hue, emitted little squeaky sounds as I walked. A sound of metal rubbing against metal. Something my father could never fix. My training began that same day in front of the big mirror in my mother and father’s room. I would watch my image as I adapted my normal walk to that of a “ bag-walk”. A slight adjustment here. A slight adjustment there. Would it look better in my right hand…or my left? Was I holding the bag like a big person? I, the perfectionist, worked hard perfecting what I though was just the right “smile” of a big schoolgirl. Anyone watching would have wondered what I was doing. Part of my practise involved opening, closing, and locking my bag. Two small locks, and a small spring-loaded clip, were the bag’s only security. A tiny set of keys continually rode snugly concealed in my hip pocket, tightly tied to the loops of my pants by a long woven string. I believed no one could open my bag without them. The bag was my pharaoh’s tomb – a vault that now contained my treasured new wooden pencil case. A very grainy black and white photo, taken of me just before I left for my first day at school, shows me standing at the front door clad in a crisp green checkered school uniform with feet encased in heavy big black laced Clark shoes, and carrying my brown bag. By lunchtime of that same day, the new smell of my bag was replaced with that of musty food. The smell of sweaty sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, a bruised piece of fruit, and homemade biscuits. The waffled smell of an encased hot banana is still sharp in my memory. My bag adopted the smell, and spills of many lunches. The pharaoh’s tomb of my first schooldays spent many hours next to me. It travelled on the school bus and rested on the floor of dusty classrooms. It became my seat during recess when there were not enough benches for everyone to sit on. It sheltered me during the wet of rain against my head. It became my stool when I needed height to pull the stop cord on the old red school bus. It became so much a part of me until the day I forgot it was there. That day came when I jumped from the bus in a hurried burst full of the day’s activities clouding my tongue. My mother greeted me with the usual 4711-perfumed kiss to the cheek and ushered me into the house. Neither of us noticed the missing bag until well into the evening. My father’s calls to a busy bus company went unanswered. I felt nothing could replace my bag, or what it represented. I wanted it back. But no one really seemed interested in finding my little bag of treasures. It was gone. My pharaoh’s tomb of treasures had been lost. 
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