THE PURSE

We all gathered together for my grandmother’s 90th birthday, and my present for her was a new purse. She didn’t need it; she didn’t get out much anymore, but I didn’t know what else to get a 90 year old woman.

The purse was black, high-quality, pebble-grain leather with a long strap. It must have been Italian. It cost me a decent amount but I thought it was worth it because I didn’t know how many more birthdays we would be able to celebrate with her. She talked about death constantly, telling stories about my long-dead grandpa, reminding us that she was the last of her graduating class to be alive, and even saying “Next time you see me, dear, I might be flying with the angels” every time we said goodbye now.

My gift was the last to be opened. We had had brunch in the common area at her assisted-living facility, then cake, the the packages seemed to magically appear from under the table to the top of it after the dishes were collectively cleared.

She got a scented candle. She got a gift certificate to the local spa for a massage or a manicure. She got a new ecru cardigan (from my mom, of course). 

And then, the purse. I put it in a bag with white tissue paper on top instead of in a box, so she didn’t have to ruin her nails opening it. 

Everyone oohed and aahed at how nice the material was, how much it must have cost (I put my finger to my lips and shhhed), how grandma never treated herself to anything nice or expensive.

“It’s too much, dear,” she told me, patting my hand.

“Enjoy it, Mom,” my own mother said. “You deserve it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” she said. 

But when we got back to her little apartment inside the complex, without saying a word, the two of us sat down in her lounger chairs in the second bedroom that acted as a den, and for some reason she settled on TOP GUN to have on in the background on TV as we began the process of transferring the contents of her old purse into her new one.

It was all normal stuff. In the bottom, she had a lot of wadded up white tissues, some used, some not. There were old bottles of medicine, of course. Gum, breath mints, butterscotch candies. A pair of old reading glasses, the kind you get for cheap from the drug store, except one of the dark lenses was half-broken. I urged her to get rid of them.

She had an old, weathered, ebony-colored plastic checkbook cover from the country bank she had been a patron of for decades, check numbers reading into the tens of thousands. Attached to that were a few dark ink pens, stolen from various motels from around the country that acted almost as a travelogue of her retirement.

Grandma never left the states, was scared of flying. They used to drive around in an RV and visit national parks once they retired, but she would never get in a plane. Maybe because of old war stories from grandpa, who had been a paratrooper in The War.

She pulled out another item my grandpa Dick gave it to her — a little silver Zippo lighter with no fluid in it from his time in the parachute troops, he had engraved her name on it, etched on with his Ka-BAR knife:

HEDDY

That was a nickname; her real name was Hedwig, but she hated how it sounded and besides, at that time, she was trying to hide her German heritage as much as she could.

They got married during a three-day leave in the Methodist church in their town, then had a reception in the church basement with punch, cake and mint candies, then he flew out to Europe. She spent the time he was away selling war bonds, and he gave her the lighter when we got back in early 1946.

Next she pulled out a used bottle of lube. I put my hand to my mouth and I think I gasped.

“Oh my God, grandma,” I said.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, dear, but a lot of makin’ whoopee goes on around here.”

Then the purse started to act almost like a clown car, with increasingly bigger things coming out of it: her wedding dress, a framed picture of her and grandpa from sometime in the 60s, the bicycle she rode on country roads to get to her one-room country school, a hoe she used to row in her back yard when she kept a victory garden, a bright blue kite.

The whole family was there, absentmindedly watching her take these things out of her old purse in between bites of cake, sips of coffee, glances at the stock market or social media on their phone or watching Tom Cruise soar through the skies, and no one besides me seemed to think any of this was unusual. 

Not even when she pulled out an entire parachute from that purse. It looked used, well-worn, moth-eaten even. She smiled when she saw it. 

“What’s going on, grandma?” I asked, confused and surprised.

“This was Dick’s, too!” She said.

“How did it get…” I said, trailing off, shaking my head.

“After the war, we used to go to the airfield, watch the planes go up. Crop dusters, mostly. I miss those Sunday drives,” she said.

“Do…do you want to go on a drive?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t want to trouble you,” she said.

“It’s no trouble,” I told her, and meant it.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind…” she said, and now it was her turn to trail off.

We all piled into our various cars and drove off to the municipal airfield on the outskirts of town. There, in a Quonset hut surrounded by corn fields and a small runway, a group of enthusiasts were in different stages of packing or repacking their parachutes, practicing their landings, or working on a flight simulator attached to a computer that had to be 30 years old at least.

They were welcoming, and seemed to be expecting my grandma on some level. No one was surprised other than me when she told them she was there to skydive that day.

The assembled jumpers, maybe a dozen in total and all men, immediately began the process of getting her fitted in a khaki-colored full-body suit, as well as procuring a credit card reader to charge her for the service.

She pulled the parachute out of the new purse I gave her. The black mustachioed man set to be attached to her for the tandem jump admired it for a few minutes, checking certain markings and muttering and whistling to himself before helping her pack it up properly for deployment.

I wondered if this was a good idea, but no one else in the family seemed concerned. They milled around, asking pertinent questions, watching the flight simulator’s rudimentary graphics, watching the small 4-seater planes come in and out.

It was time for grandma to go up. Mr. Mustache helped her in the door, and as she sat in the low seat, she waved to us as the little plane’s propellers twirled and it taxied out to the runway.

It took about 10 minutes for it to get to the requisite 10,000 feet, but once it did, we could see them jump out. We were told there would be a 5,000 foot free fall where my grandma and the man attached to her would speed toward the earth in about 30 seconds before he would pull the cord, and then they would float to the earth.

We watched the parachute expand suddenly, jerking violently until it began to glide through the sky above the two of them, attached by thin ropes, and connected to each other.

“I can’t believe it,” my mom said, hand at her mouth, shaking her head in wonder. “I didn’t think she had it in her.”

I quipped to one of the other enthusiasts out there watching them, “I bet you don’t get many 90 year olds skydiving, eh?” 

To which he replied, “You’d be surprised.”

And I was surprised at how well the sound carried. I could hear her talking about how her family was in town, how nice it was to see us, how it was her birthday, how good the cake tasted, how much the man reminded her of her husband, my grandpa.

Eventually she landed, not at all gracefully, her arms and legs askew but thankfully unhurt, and the man with the mustache unclipped himself and helped her up. She gave him a hug and then admitted to him that she desperately had to pee.

We walked back into the building as she told us what it felt like to be up there, her eyes wide, a smile on her face, her cheeks flushed. After her bathroom break, she gifted the man her parachute, then we piled back in our cars to return to her home.

Once inside, she said the afternoon had made her very tired, and that she felt like she should take a nap before dinner. Everyone agreed that seemed reasonable, and we all made plans to meet up at 6PM at a nearby Mexican restaurant to continue the celebration. She seemed pleased, and thanked me again for her new purse, which she placed on her bedside table before changing into her nightgown. She threw the old purse in the trash without ceremony.

We said our goodbyes and left together, closing the door behind us, to let her rest.