When I was a little girl, maybe eight, my mother had a bag. A bag so big that I thought we were going on vacation.

No, it was just a handbag—a bigger one, says the 57-year-old woman inside me, but just a handbag. Light brown—I would call it deer brown, with parts from brass. It looked a little like Mary Poppins’ bag, but my mom wasn’t Mary. 

Born in 1936 in Oberhausen, Germany, in the coal mining area, to my grandfather and grandmother who were selling coal to the people. Born at that time. Life filled her bag very soon with experiences heavy and hard as steel. After only three years of childhood, the war started. A child and a war, first it was not, there was no war and she didn’t understand what daddy was talking about.

That changed after a year; bombs were dropped over the city for the first time. The howling sound followed by this loud bang! It must have been scary. And soon she spent a lot of time in the bunker, a dark concrete building without any windows and with one steel door. 

A little later, she spent day and night in the bunker for two years… And somehow all these howling bombs landed in her bag and turned into things one needed to be prepared.

The bombs turned into a beautiful hand-crocheted handkerchief, her wallet, paper tissues, a bandaid, a little notebook and pen, a tiny spray bottle of perfume, a lipstick, her key and maybe a secret or two that I still don’t know. 

She learned to pack a bag at age three, packing a bag for the bunker.

The bunker was a room about 14 feet wide and 16 long with a low ceiling, with built-in benches. Big enough for 20 people and a bucket in one corner.

The howling alarm sirens screamed run. And she ran with her always ready-packed bag on mother’s hand into the bunker. The door closed when the siren stopped.

Sitting down with her bag between her little feet. Silence, followed by the sounds of airplanes and bang sometimes far away sometimes very near. Bang, a man in the bunker says it’s for the final victory.

Final victory she whispered into daddy’s ear, I’m afraid so afraid stop it, stop it now. Yes you’re right but I can’t answered her dad and hush don’t let this man hear it.

Maybe there was another child to play with, how normal it could be to sit in a bunker fleeing from the bomb shower 1943 to 1945.

It was normal to have the bag packed and what was in it. I hope her doll; she loved dolls as a grownup. Fresh underwear in case of fearful accidents. A blanket and many handkerchiefs for her tears. Sitting in this stinky bunker, smelling the sweat of fear and hearing the sound of war.

Sleeting bombs…sleeting bombs for two years. One day she came out of the bunker and there was a body lying on the ground, someone who didn’t make it on time. 

The war facing a child. Thankfully daddy was too handicapped and in an essential business, so he wasn’t forced into the army; thankfully they never understood he was a social democrat and not a Nazi.

The war ended. The city had been destroyed but they were grateful the house was still standing. A homeless family moved in with them for a few months. Mum’s bag turned back into a schoolbag, and she loved it.

The bag was still packed perfectly. The school bag turned into a job bag and then the first time into a holiday bag…Followed by a baby bag… And later her bag. Somehow her bag was holy. 

One day she drove with me to the big city, while we were living in the country and she was buying things. We had an ice cream and drove back. In the middle of this trip she missed her bag—she stopped, searched, returned, but her bag was gone. I remember so well that she was in tears while driving home.

A few days later the police called. The bag had been found, just some money lost. She got it back and it disappeared—she never used that bag again. 

It was replaced so many times in 83 years of living and even at the end when dementia had taken so much. The bag…

Now I have that bag and I don’t want it any more… 

That bag filled with sorrow, depression, tears, hard work, a little happiness.

Nobody should have to carry that kind of bag.

Andrea Jasmine Schwenk lives in Honesdale, PA. The text is based on her mother’s living.