Monthly Essays

Handbags and Crystals

“I know it’s in here somewhere,” I told my friends who sat at the kitchen table eating popcorn. They had related their diamond digging debacle in Arkansas followed by a search for crystals, which prompted the dig in my purse.

I’ve carried a crystal for over two decades. A total stranger came up to me at a conference where I was speaking and said I looked troubled. I did. This was shortly after Jim’s cascade of cancers began. I didn’t explain the health issue, but this woman said the clear crystal with the green formation inside was a healing stone. Do I believe in that? Why not? I’ll take whatever help I can get.

But I couldn’t find the crystal that popcorn night. I had zippered compartments in my purse, but none revealed the stone, although I didn’t take things out and thoroughly search. I did today, and I found it.

There was a time I carried a purse that had an inner light. Just pushed the button and it lit up the insides of that bag so I could find anything, anytime. It was kind of fun, but the battery didn’t last long.

Like the organized person I am, for a while I carried a handbag that had interior slots for insurance cards, ID, credit cards. I liked that feature. Then a friend, on her deathbed, said she wanted me to have the new brown suede bag she’d bought in Italy. I carried it for over seven years until the zipper broke. I very recently replaced it with a bright red purse, since I like the cheerful color.

Long ago, my mom would change purses to match her shoes. White, brown, black. I was amazed she’d go to all that trouble. For me, getting a new purse was huge. It was something I had to break in and know what was in each compartment. It takes a lot of time to learn a new handbag, hence the reason I couldn’t find that crystal.

Everyone has different requirements for an ideal purse, and the purse she carries can tell a lot about a woman. What’s inside is even more important. I once saw a game show where the host picked contestants by asking audience members to dig out the oddest objects from their purses. Hey, that would make a good party game, and you’d learn more about your guests. A woman carries two mismatched socks? Interesting. A fake tarantula? Really? Forty-seven one-dollar bills? Hmmmm.

A requirement for my ideal purse is it must be big enough to hold a light paperback. I can’t carry a hardback in a bag or my right shoulder would give out. An iPad is too heavy. My phone is hefty, but it gets a space, and I sometimes read on it. Everything else must be light. I don’t carry a billfold in my purse, and I once embarrassed my sister at an upscale department store by whipping out a Ziplock baggie that held coins and folding money. She gave me a lightweight coin purse.

That healing crystal that I now know is in the side zippered compartment is no bigger than my index finger. It qualifies as a lightweight object. I’ll keep carrying it in my flaming red purse. Why not? Could come in handy at a party or a gameshow.

This year’s Christmas story was inspired by a news report that Independence, MO, was being used as a location shoot for a Hallmark movie. I took that tidbit and let my imagination take over.

A made-for-TV movie crew comes to Jasper!

Sam Rockwood, at 33 the youngest-ever sheriff of Jasper County, KS, knows Candy Malone’s parents misnamed her. Oh, she’s a blonde knockout and can probably dance around a pole, but she’s serious-minded, smart, and sensible—and she’s his sister’s best friend. She’s been a pain to him ever since she’s come back to town as a grownup woman, and not the girl-next-door (well, girl-at-the-adjoining-ranch) he’s known most of her 27 years. He shouldn’t be attracted to her in that way, so his solution is to avoid being alone with her.

Between running the sheriff’s office and managing the ranch, now he has to provide crowd control for the filming of the made-for-TV Christmas movie in sweltering July. His sister and Candy sign him up as an extra, and the filming and the chaos begin.

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Travel back to small town life in 1954 to meet the people who live on the Corner of Pearl & Moffet.

Before 33-year-old Josie Jameson takes the seat reserved for the widow, she glances around the old graveyard. Over three hundred people have gathered to pay their respects to her late husband. That is nearly the population of Ducane, Arkansas.

She had married Orville nine years earlier. That he was 43 years her senior hadn’t really troubled her, but there had been plenty of talk. She was a farm girl when she married and moved to the big white house on the corner of Pearl and Moffet. She didn’t fit the mold of housewife to the richest man in town. Now that he’s dead, she owns the Ducane Savings and Loan, The Station that makes more money from liquor sales than gasoline, his private ledger books with unofficial loans and repayment schedules, and the little brown books written in his tight scrawl that hold the town’s secrets.

When tragedy strikes, the good people of Ducane, who share each other’s joys and sorrows, who celebrate others’ accomplishments with pride, who take food to the bereaved and do chores for those who are sick, these same good people whisper, “This is Josie’s fault!”

Corner of Pearl & Moffet is a gripping tale of one woman’s struggle through sorrow and challenges to find her own life. Download your copy today.

2024 essay