Alice I Have Been

Why, then, did I always feel as if his happiness was my responsibility? It wasn't fair for him to burden me with that. It had never been fair.

I suppose at some point, we all have to decide which memories - real or otherwise - to hold on to, and which ones to let go.

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.

I had wanted to live forever as a gypsy girl; I had wanted to live forever as a child, tumbling down a rabbit hole. I had been granted both wishes, only to find immortality was not what it had promised to be; instead of a passport to the future, it was a yoke that bound me to the past.

Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason.

Wonderland was all we had in common, after all; Wonderland was what was denied the two of us. I had denied him his; he had denied me mine.

My head grew muddled with it all; the silly ways adults acted with one another, never saying what they meant, trusting in sighs and glances and distance to speak for them instead. How dangerous that was! How easy it must be to misinterpret a sigh or a look.

There was something about his eyes—the color of the periwinkle that grew at the base of the trees in the Meadow, such a deep blue—that made me feel as if he could see my dearest wishes, my darkest thoughts, before they made themselves known to me. And that simply by seeing them, he was also giving me permission to follow them. Perhaps he was even showing me the way.

His death notice included the mention that in 1880, he had married Alice in Wonderland. I like to think he would have been pleased at that, but the truth is he was the only one to whom this didn't matter at all.

...all his smiles were just a little sad around the edges, as if he knew happiness never could last very long

All of this was mine, simply for agreeing to marry a man I did not love but who was, in the end, the only man who had ever asked.

I knew that no matter what I said, it would not be enough; when you’re on the other side of the looking glass, nothing is as it seems.

the Germans all hate the Kaiser and there’ll most likely be a civil war, instead.

When I was six, I had known nothing. Now that I was seven, however, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how very wise I was growing.

I had the foresight to pick up a shard of china—the faded pink china bow of the shepherdess’s apron—and plant it in Ina’s shoe that night, hoping to incriminate her instead, I did not fool Mamma.

why Phoebe always dipped her food into tea before she ate it (she said she had soft teeth and didn’t want to lose them before she got too old to catch a husband).

My head grew muddled with it all; the silly ways adults acted with one another, never saying what they meant, trusting in sighs and glances and distance to speak for them instead. How dangerous that was! How easy it must be to misinterpret a sigh or a look. I was quite sure I’d never get it right when it came my time to grow up. Fortunately, that was a long way off. Unlike Ina, I was in no hurry to learn that particular, peculiar language.

they’re pearls. And as such, should only be auctioned off to the highest bidder.” Now I was very confused. Only slaves were auctioned, and they had been outlawed long ago;

She took the letters, and she threw them in the nursery hearth, stirring them up, ripping them with the poker, all the while crying and saying things I could not understand. “You wicked, wicked girl! That horrible man! You’re ruined, that’s what! Ruined! No one will ever have you now!

I ran after her, pulling at her arm; this felt like a violation more than anything else. “You can’t read my letters! You have no right!

I listened to them ruin Mr. Dodgson for me—for us—forever. They called him horrible names; they begged Papa to dismiss him from the college.

And this—instead of happiness—would be only what the two of us deserved, after all.

There had been so many of them, so pale and thin and dirty, but Mamma had said we weren’t to feel sorry for them. They knew their place.

as the second hand continued to go around again and again; it would never stop, they would never stop coming, all the hours and days and years I would have to live without my dear boy,

I held my breath—but the pain was worse, jagged edges of glass ripping my heart apart,

he was in his grave, alone. Somewhere I could not be.

What I did not know was that I loved him, too. That was what I had found, what had been there all the time; how stupid, how selfish I had been, not to see it.

There is always so much talk about the sins of the fathers, but it is the sins of the mothers that are the most difficult to avoid repeating.

Pray remember, Alice—love isn’t all. There is family, and education, and potential. Also property, of course.