Looking for Pockets

“When I was a kid, I always wanted something in my pocket,” my dad recounted.  “Candy. Wheels.  That’s why I started smoking.  It was something to have in my pocket.”

Except, what if filling the pocket wasn’t the problem. . .

I had the opportunity to ride in a car to a conference with someone in leadership from my organization.  We had an engaging conversation about gaps and opportunities and how to choose to keep working despite consistent resistance or disappointment.  Her advice, “You need to find a pocket.”

There could be irony that my struggle to find change might lie not with the things I’m collecting in my pocket but finding my ‘pocket’ at all.  In fact, I love pockets.  I still own a brown skirt I bought my first year teaching.  It was my ‘go to’ skirt throughout my years in Guatemala.  Markers, scissors, tape, a phone. . . this brown skirt always came to the rescue with its two large pockets.  I never forgot how much I loved those two pockets and made purchases accordingly since.  I could say I had been looking for pockets for some time.

My closet now held an assortment of dresses and skirts with this characteristic, a pocket.  Recent conversations at the gym celebrated the inclusion of pockets in leggings and joggers.  Pockets could fill a niche need in a key moment.  Pockets provided some sense of security, for example, a place to put your hands when you didn’t know what to do with them.  Pockets helped you plan what to take with you, prioritizing what was most necessary and how much of it.  Still, other pockets were only for decoration, and others couldn’t hold my cell phone comfortably. 

“Find your pocket.”

I held the comment in my hands but envisioned a tote bag hanging on the doorknob in my bedroom.  A colleague offered to sew me one of her many creations.  I could have provided input on the material design or colors, but I chose not to do so.  The bag that was returned to me had two sides.  The one currently facing outward was a print full of maps of the world.  The current inner lining was full of books.   I removed the tote bag from the doorknob and turned the cloth inside out.  I ran my fingers along the seams. 

A stylish woman reading reminded me, “You’re the leading lady in your own life so make it a blockbuster!”

Another leaned up against a car with an overflowing trunk.  She instructed, “Not always 100% sure where I’m headed, but I will make sure the journey is epic!”

“Find your pocket.”

Years ago, I saw a play in London called “Stones in His Pockets.”  These pockets helped one of the characters, a local teenage, commit suicide by drowning after he was humiliated.   Were the pockets I had found, even the best of them, enough?  Or had they only accumulated haphazard items?  Were the pockets I celebrated only serving to hold me back from something that held all of me, not just pieces?

I left the bag ‘heroine’ side out. I rehung it on the doorknob with the zippered pouch covered in maps of the world tucked in its pocket.