Monday, November 7, 2011

In Wonderland

"If I listened earlier, I wouldn't be here. But that's just the trouble with me. I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it."


When I was little, Alice in Wonderland was my favorite Disney cartoon. I was never much for princesses, but Alice. I loved Alice in her pretty blue dress and her blonde hair and her confused, yet tenacious attitude in Wonderland as she chases the elusive white rabbit. As I grew older, it surprised me to find that everyone didn't love Alice as much as I did. That some people found it scary. Others found it weird. Even more wondered if the Disney producers were on acid (okay, we've all wondered that) at the time of production.


I still love Alice in Wonderland and as I grow ever older, it seems so much like the life we live is in wonderland. The number of times I've felt so very small or the number of times I've cried enough tears that it seems that surely there must be enough of them to fill an ocean. The days the beautiful flowers I once admired turned ugly and mean and made me feel like a weed and people's faces shifted into unrecognizable masks and they disappeared from my life. The growing pains between childhood and adulthood (and wondering why I'm 29 and still feel those growing pains somedays).


So maybe I love it because I identify with Alice and sometimes I spend days wondering if this is a dream or if this is real life. If I'm asleep on a river bank somewhere and just dreaming the hard days, if I'll awake in a start and walk off to afternoon tea shaking my head at the silliness of it all or if I really did fall down a rabbit hole and if I did, how do I get out?


Tonight I'm not Alice. I set out my clothes for work tomorrow. I won't be wearing a blue dress with a perfectly fashioned white apron; instead, a long grey skirt with a purple top and a black shirt to layer beneath because it's always so cold at work. I peeled a sucker off the carpet and no one was around to hear me wonder how it got there. I made the coffee for tomorrow morning. I took a long bath and fell into a good book instead of a rabbit hole and this isn't Wonderland, there is no caterpillar smoking a hookah to offer me sage advice, but tonight before bedtime, we galloped around and around and through the kitchen and living room each of us with a laughing, shrieking boy on our backs having our very own caucus race and it was more magical than any river bank dream could ever be.


linking with Heather of the EO's Just Write

10 comments:

Adam said...

Peeling the sucker off the carpet, that made me feel like things were about to get magical.

I really like this very much a lot.

Stephanie Wilson she/her @babysteph said...

I love Alice, too, but you can probably guess that about me. I just picked up a piece of garlic bread from under the couch. We had spaghetti last week. So.

Steph

Galit Breen said...

I love your details- the sucker, the layered shirts for the cod office, and the laughter.

That laughter makes it home, yes?

Lovely.

Anonymous said...

It seems like we're all in that hole, chasing the rabbit. It sounds like you've found a spot in which to sit and stop chasing. At least for the moment.

CJ said...

I love when everyday moments are so magical!

Unknown said...

I love the exercise of "just writing" because amazing things come out of us when we do.... just write.

:-)

Kirsten said...

This is beautiful, Erin.

Sober Julie said...

It's the galloping at night which allows us to get through the day...

Melissa Haak said...

I'm almost 35 and I still wonder about the growing up pains and parts as well as how I got here.

I loved this Erin, truly loved your telling of it.

Lyndsay said...

I don't remember seeing Alice in Wonderland as a child, but watched it for (what I think was) the first time a couple of years ago with Munchie. I'll admit - I was a little taken aback! What the...
But I love how you've written this! Absolutely love it.