Remembering Alice

White Rabbit / Jefferson Airplane









Once one thing from the past is discovered to be inaccurate or worse, outright wrong, it calls into question everything. Suddenly, every memory is scanned looking for missed clues, misinterpretations, proof of truths outside of one’s thoughts.



For me once such discovery centered around our neighbor. My early impressions were that she was a nice old woman who rented a bedroom and kitchen apartment in my grandmother’s house. Although I was five or six, we became friends. I recall sitting in her kitchen, drinking hot chocolate, playing rummy, and my favorite, sitting on the sill of her second floor kitchen window. My legs could dangle out on the eaves of the roof and I was afforded not only an excellent view of the backyard, but the street behind our house and the neighborhood’s makeshift ball park. I remember how I enjoyed our time together and ‘our talks.” Though I cannot tell you what we talked about. I do faintly remember complaints she had of other tenants or my grandmother that I dismissed as only a child can do. Working hard at recall, I think her name was Alice.


My clearest memory however is not of her face or voice, but of her handwriting. Neatly printed block letters so evenly spaced they might have been typed. I is the memory of her writing that questions. Adult knowledge super imposing itself on a child’s image and creating the certainty that the memories are incomplete. Not necessarily that I have forgotten, but that being I child I was not exposed to the information to be able to file it away for future recall.


I’d become familiar with Alice’s writing because we used to pass notes to each other under the door. Secret notes about times to meet and promises of friendship. My emotional memory of these notes assures me they were private missives left in secrecy for which I feared discovery. But why? I know I had visited with permission at times, so what was the story behind these secret notes? Had my mother forbid me to visit out of fear I would pester the woman to death? Or was it jealousy and sanctions to keep me away from another adult I might find care or comfort with? Or was it a material protection from a threat real or imagined?


Such questions have caused me to search my mental photo album for clues, but I find none. Instead, more questions are raised. My adult self recognized Alice as not nearly as old as she had seemed, but a forty or fifty year old woman, some what weathered by life. But who was she?


What caused her to accept a two room, second floor apartment with a shared bath? Why did she befriend a six year old? Did she have a job? I vaguely remember mention of a family. Why can I mostly remember her writing? Most frustrating, is the knowledge that I will never know.