Carry
#1 Self
1/8/2026
My original beige and red LLBean bag has occupied a corner of my bedroom since 1987. My maiden name initials embroidered across the front catch me off guard with their unfamiliarity. I’ve carried the tote to college, to apartments, to our first home and now here. It is old, and yet just looking at it makes me feel young. It is unassuming and wrinkled, stained from open pens and time, and despite the recommended washing technique, let’s be honest, will never come like-new clean.
I’ve stuffed this bag for teenage sleepovers and ski bus, with diapers and toys for toddler day trips. I debate retiring it, replacing it with who I’ve been for 30 years - KFG. Not today, today it still has a bit of life in it and a job to do.
I am late, again. Not technically, of course, because that is one of my biggest pet peeves. But, disorganized late, rushing room to room gathering “things” I will not use for a day out of the house. Computer, books, notebook, lesson plan for today’s writing class. The quilted beige Kate Spade purse is on the bed, it is chic and simple - goes with everything. I spy the canvas bag in the corner, dump my library stack of supplies into it and run out the door. I want to feel young.
We carry so much more than we can fit in a bag.
Thoughts and beliefs from the dinner table to round tables in school. Stories we think, or once thought, were true, dog-eared and highlighted as if we mustn’t let them go. Even if they are - Outdated. Heavy. Ours.
But no story has the clarity of being carried as much as Barbara’s.
Barbara walked into my writing class at the cancer wellness center, her backpack slung across one shoulder like an anchor, and announced: I can’t write.
I let that armor pass without comment and welcomed her.
Each week she came in with the same acknowledgment. She wasn’t a writer. She could not write. She didn’t know why she came.
Each week, she participated. She shared. She wrote. Pen to paper, her notebook filling to the edges with story after story. The prompts led her away from “Barbara who can’t write” to the heroine she had always seen herself as - Alice in Wonderland. The adventurer. The traveler. The one seeing things upside down and different.
Then one day, Barbara came up to me.
“Can I show you something?”
She pulled out her journal and opened it to a two-page spread. A centerfold of writing and crafting, of mixed media and art, the borders decoupaged and filled with prose. It was beautiful.
“You know,” she said, “I didn’t think I could write, but I can. And it’s made all the difference in the world.”
Barbara dropped the story she had been carrying around in that backpack and picked up another one.
“This class makes me think the impossible is possible.”
XO,
KFG
PROMPTS:
What bag do you reach for most often? Describe it—the wear, the weight, what’s tucked inside.
What story have you been carrying that no longer fits?
If you dropped it, what would you pick up instead?
Share in the comments what you're carrying this week
THE MIDLIFE LIT LOUNGE:
In the Midlife Lit Lounge - my paid community - we’re reading The Dutch House by Ann Patchett and tracing the language of inheritance. What do we carry from the houses we grew up in? What stories live in the architecture long after we leave?
If you want to read with us, join us in the Lounge.
Learn more about the Lounge HERE