Lauren Carr

Last week, my family went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game. (Mets won) Before entering the stadium, we were herded through security for a bag search. As I approached the guard, my heart raced. The anxiety had nothing to do with any possible contraband that he may have found in my bag, but due to the volume of items that he would have to weigh through in order to determine if I was dangerous to others, or just my back.

When I came up to the guard, I opened the giant overweight purse and cracked, “It’s a Mommy bag.”

He responded with a laugh, “I’ve seen a lot of those.” He shuffled through a few of the items as if he were afraid that his fingers might get caught in the mousetrap that I have set at the bottom, and then waved me through the gate.

At that moment, as I watched all the other women weighed down with heavy bags masquerading as purses that carried all the essentials for their group’s outing moving through the stadium, I realized that I belonged to the social class categorized as the family pack mule.

This really came home a few days later while in the midst of piling into the car to make the next appointment on our agenda that was supposed to be a vacation. I bent over in the back seat to clean up a mess that no one claimed to have made, when the Mommy bag landed upside-down on my head and the contents spilled out. Both my husband and son had a good laugh at me trying to collect marbles (yes, marbles) that had rolled into the parking lot.

Back when I was young, shortly after the cavemen emerged and started making their homes in huts, I was free to carry my few essentials (mirror, lipstick, comb, car keys, and wallet) in a chic little handbag that hung in a carefree manner by a thin leather strap from my shoulder. Then, I got married and chic dropped off my list of priorities. Like a pack mule on a wagon train across Death Valley, I care more about surviving an outing than I do about looking stylish.

It started with my husband handing his checkbook to me and asking that I carry it in my purse. He didn’t have room to carry it in his pockets and since men don’t wear suits with inside breast pockets anymore, the only place left to carry the checkbook was my purse.

Then came his car keys; and then the mail.

Then came our son. So I was assigned the task of carrying everything we could think of to bribe him into acting civilized in public.

Then came Grandpa and his paraphernalia that needed transporting.

Sometimes stuff is just tossed over a shoulder in my general direction with hopes that it would land in the family saddlebag. After years of this, I gave in and got a big old ugly Mommy bag with an industrial strength strap to attach to my body for transport.

What can you find in a Mommy bag? Well, as of this moment, here is what is in mine:

One zipped-up section of the Mommy bag is reserved for my stuff. It contains cosmetics in case I meet someone I want to impress and need to clean myself up. I also have a vial of holy water. No, I’m not Catholic, but a friend of mine is. She gave me this holy water shortly after Grandpa moved in. I think she suspected that he was possessed. Turns out he was just cranky because it was going to be a couple of weeks before we could take him in to get his toenails clipped. But I still have the holy water just in case I need it.

In another section, I have a cell phone that does not work. It was a freebie that came with our service. I also have a second cell phone in the Mommy bag. For that one, I paid a hundred dollars upgrade because the freebie didn’t work. The new one does not work right either, but that’s another column. I also have a cell phone battery that I got in hopes of making the first cell phone work, but it didn’t help. That was why I had to get the second one.

I also have two sets of airplane tickets and luggage receipts from May. One was mine, the other was Grandpa’s. I had to carry his so that it would not get lost. Clearly, it didn’t because it is still in the Mommy bag.

I have a pair of scratched up sun glasses that I carry in case I can’t find my good pair. Right now, I don’t know where the good sunglasses are.

I have a recipe for Yukon Gold Potato Salad with a grocery list on the back. There are a lot of old shopping lists in the Mommy bag. I never know what to do with a shopping list after checking out my groceries. I don’t want to throw them away at the store, so I put them in the Mommy bag and they all gather together at the bottom along with my son’s crayons.

The Mommy bag also contains three pairs of Sharkboy 3-D glasses from when we went to see Sharkboy and Lavagirl a month ago. As soon as the movie was over, my husband and son handed me their glasses. My son did not want them thrown away because he wanted to keep them to remember the movie by. Considering that they have been in my purse all this time and he has never asked for them, I guess I can toss them now, or I can save them for in case they ever start making road signs in 3-D.

I have a pack of wet wipes. I don’t know where it came from. Now that I don’t need it, there it is. How much do you want to bet that I won’t be able to find it when I need it if I leave it in the bag?

I also have three pairs of pens and crayons in a variety of colors. Every time I go to the store and need to write a check, I have to ask the clerk for a pen because I can’t find one in my purse. Yet, I can always find crayons. Go figure.

In case I ever get lost between my house and Charles Town, I also have a map of West Virginia. This was left over from our vacation. I also have a balloon with the US flag on it, a can of bug repellant, a bag of M&M’s (those will be gone in five minutes), and two of those complimentary bags of nuts that they give you on planes.

I don’t like nuts, but every time we go on a flight I end up with three or four bags of these things in the Mommy bag. Nobody in my family eats them while on the plane, but instead of insisting that the flight attendant take them back, they hand them to me to store in the Mommy bag in case our wagon train is attacked by coyotes who do like nuts.

Well, I have learned that everyone has an important job essential for keeping the family going. Mine is pack mule. That was okay until I saw an old western and discovered that the pack mule who carries all the supplies is usually the first one that the coyotes attack.