A letter from a reader

At 54, my granddaughter asked why I always have to say “hang on” before I can hold her hand.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman carries has never been any of my business.

But three different women have asked me about this bag since the school holidays, two of them at the same playground, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Poppy, who is five, at the crossing on the way down to the park. I had the bag on one shoulder, the water bottles in that hand and her little backpack in the other, and when she put her hand up for mine I said what I always say, which is hang on, darling, and started rearranging myself. She waited. She is very patient with me. And then she looked up and said it.

Nanna, why do you always have to say hang on first?

I laughed, and then I stood on the kerb with the lights going and I could not think of a single good answer. Because it was not once. It was every time. At the crossing, at the shops, getting out of the car, going through the gate. Hang on, darling. Hang on. A whole afternoon with her, spent one second behind.

I did not decide to spend my afternoons with my hands full. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one bag at a time, until one day a five year old is waiting on a kerb for her nanna to be ready.

How it happens

When I actually went looking for a bag I could forget about, I understood how I had ended up with the ones I had.

The shops give you two choices. There are the shoulder bags, which slide off every time you bend down, so you spend the day hitching them back up with the hand you were about to use for something else. And there are the big open totes, which you have to hold shut, or hold upright, or hold at all.

Hitching or holding. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a bag that simply stays where she put it.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy another shoulder bag. You hitch it up four hundred times a day. And you assume that is simply what having a bag is.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought my problem was the size. Every time a bag got in my way I bought a smaller one, and the smaller one got in my way just as much, because it was still hanging off one shoulder waiting to fall.

It turns out it was never about the size.

It is about where the strap goes. Across the body instead of over one shoulder, long enough to sit on the hip, and the bag stops being something you manage. It is just on you, like a cardigan is on you, and both hands are free from the moment you leave the house to the moment you get home.

It took me until 54, and a five year old on a kerb, to work that out.

The bag is called the Alina

It is from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. My friend Bev found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

The bag is called the Alina. A soft tan crossbody in a warm leather look, slouchy rather than stiff, with a long adjustable strap and a zipped pocket across the front with a little metal clasp on it. Mine is the tan. It is not a big bag and it holds more than it looks like it will.

The front pocket is the part that matters. It sits exactly where your hand falls when the bag is across you, so you can get your phone or your keys out without looking down and without stopping walking. Everything else goes in the main part and stays there. The strap adjusts, so it sits on the hip rather than across the middle, and because it is across the body it does not slide off when you bend down to do up a shoe.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a bag that stays where you put it.

What happened at the zoo

The first proper outing was the zoo with Poppy, which is four hours of bending down and standing up again.

Three women asked me about it before we got to the giraffes. The one with the twins started it, because she said she had been looking for exactly that and had given up.

The third was Bev, who had already seen it twice and who said nothing for a fortnight, and then said I seemed more relaxed with Poppy lately. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that I did not say it once. Not at the gate, not at the ice cream van, not getting back into the car. Four hours and not one hang on, darling, which I had not realised I had been saying twenty times an afternoon until I stopped.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk her to kindy. Her hand in one of mine, the bag across me, nothing to rearrange. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Across the body is a different thing entirely. It is not just convenience. It is being able to hold a hand the second it goes up, instead of a second later. Small thing. Changes the whole afternoon.

Two. The front pocket is where the time goes. Phone and keys in the front, everything else in the back. I have stopped doing the thing where you stand in a doorway going through a bag with one arm up to your elbow in it.

Three. It is small and it is not too small. Purse, phone, keys, glasses, a packet of sultanas and a spare pair of socks for a five year old. I have not had to leave anything behind yet.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Alina is $56.99. It was $199.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch at that price, because I have paid three times as much for a bag that spent its life sliding off my arm.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Thirty-seven bags in the collection, starting at $46.99, and they put a bracelet in with every leather bag, which I was not expecting and which my daughter now owns.

Then I ordered a second one for Kate, who has a toddler and the same problem and did not know it yet.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the kitchen with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years with your hands full and your bag halfway down your arm, not because you like it but because that seemed to be all there was, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a handbag will change your life. It will not. But there is something in having both hands free the whole way round a zoo that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the free shipping goes with it. And it is the tan that goes first, which I found out because Bev had to wait a week for hers.

I have not said hang on, darling, since.

Maggie