My usual summer uniform is black slacks with a black tee shirt. Black sandals. Black purse. Today, however, I did something wild and crazy!
A new summer bag.
As I was buying it, I had a flashback to the last time I bought a blue purse. Early 1960s--I was 12 or 13 years old and, like today, it was a few days before Easter.
My family lived in Albany, NY. But, for some reason, I was shipped down to Brooklyn to spend Easter with my Aunt Marie, Uncle Mike and cousins.
That spring, I had read in Seventeen Magazine that “neutral colors with flashes of blue accessories” was what all the girls were wearing. OK, my Easter outfit was neutral--gray coat, a white hat with a gray ribbon, black patent leather shoes, black patent bag. However, being the spoiled brat I was, I just had to carry a blue purse that Easter or I would simply die!
Couldn't find a blue purse in downtown Albany. So helping me find one when I arrived in Brooklyn, then fell to my Aunt Marie. She took my cousin Margaret and me into "the city" -- Manhattan! Macy's Herald Square! Macy's--a store bigger than all of downtown Albany!
It's funny how I have no memory of why I spent Easter in Brooklyn that year or how I got to and from Albany and Brooklyn--but, I can still remember walking around and around and around the purse department of Macy's with Aunt Marie and Margaret. Aunt Marie was one of the kindest, sweetest people I've ever known and I just hate to think how I must have tried her patience that day.
That bag wasn't blue enough, this one is the wrong blue, the clasp is ugly, clunky, glittery, the straps were too long, too short. On and on I complained.
But I found one. A baby blue shoulder bag. And I thought myself to be oh-so-sophisticated and fashionable that Easter.
Today, I once again found myself in Macy's purse department a few days before Easter. Did I buy this blue purse to break up the black monotony of my summer clothes? Or were the past memories tugging at my subconscious?
