Before I could read a calendar, I knew the season of the year by the color of my Grandmother’s purse. The glorious shine of the white leather sack told us all it was spring. When unzipped I knew if I removed most of the essentials, that I could fit my whole head inside. I only knew this because with her attention focused on the stove, I sat on her bed and did just that. I can’t explain the need to get inside everything, I suppose I thought the love was there. So I clomped around in her Thom McAn shoes. Tied her apron around my head so it wouldn’t hit the floor. And I felt a part of it all. A part of her. But it was in the spring of my fifth year, the reveal of the white purse was accompanied by white gloves. Never had I wanted to be inside something more. I saw her slip one glove through the handles, bracing the weighted sack against her church dress, while coddling with the other white gloved hand. I envied the purse. The gloves. (In the most loving of ways.) I sat between her and my mother at Calvary Lutheran. I’m sure others were there, but how could I notice anything beyond those gloves? At one point in the service, (I can’t be sure when because I felt a little faint with excitement), she slipped out her hands and laid the gloves on her knee. I could barely breathe. I looked up at my mother for permission. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say why not. I picked them off of her lap as gently as if not to wake a baby, and slowly slipped my hands inside. I had no idea what was happening. It all felt so wonderful. Had I just become a woman? I folded my hands. I clutched them to my imaginary pearls. I held my face within the pure whiteness of all that love. And I was saved.

I never imagined for that moment to be outdone. But in my sixth season of the white purse, my sixth spring, my mother came down the Sunday morning hallway, singing her own words to the easter song, “Here comes Peter Cotton Fuzz, best little bunny there ever was…” and she hand me the basket. I assume it had chocolate eggs and jelly beans… but how could I be sure, because I couldn’t look away from the white gloves draped over the handle. I crawled inside of all that love. And I have never left.