Advice from the Cat

Like Alice, I grew up feeling like I was too big one day and too small the next. We’re finishing discussion of the classic Alice in Wonderland and I’ve been amazed at those who either haven’t read it or were surprised to find meaning in it today. I’m Kathleen Holt and personally, I love reading young adult books and classics because I feel like each time, I learn something about myself – either looking back or from my perspective today.

With all that falling, being frightened, weird animals and manic events, I’m not too surprised that many readers felt confused as child-readers, but I recall dreams of falling and chases by scary creatures as I navigated dreams of being “big” or “capable” enough to manage the scary and unexpected elements of growing up in a small rural town where I, as the oldest, was often charged with watching my siblings and performing adult tasks including housework and cooking.

But the scary things in this book pale in comparison to the comfort I felt when Alice survived and even thrived after the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and certainly after she conquered the Wonderland Courts where the punishment or sentence was doled out before the verdict. Perhaps I watch too much crime and court TV not to have appreciated the similarities between justice on the screen and justice in Wonderland.

That said, as I write I’m conscious of the yellowing newspaper clipping hanging on my wall. I clipped this rendition of the Cheshire Cat grinning down from the branch of a big tree, Alice standing in the center of a crossroads right below the trunk of the tree more than a half century ago while I was away from home for the first time, a first-year student in college. The quote below Tenniel’s drawing goes like this:

“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don't much care where.

The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.

The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”

The thinking there really caught my mind those many years ago, so much so that I still have it posted on my office wall. My former husband shared a similar philosophy often quoting, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re sure to get there.” He thought “there” was “somewhere” I guess.

In Alice’s case, I certainly disagreed. Most times, I knew where I wanted to go and I felt that the direction I took was important, even though I always believed it was possible and even advisable to be open to backing up, turning around, making the somewhere one wanted to go a place one could arrive, and especially, as the Cheshire Cat said, “if only you walk long enough.”

I’m glad I reread Alice in Wonderland in my now mostly adult world. It is satisfying to realize that I still have elements of that little girl informing me which fork in the road to take, knowing that I might still meet some odd characters, talking animals, might yet experience a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party or two, and that all the while, I’m guided by the wisdom of a grinning cat high up in one of those big trees that mean so much to those of us who live and work on the High Plains – a wonderland of our own.

I’m Kathleen Holt in Cimarron, Kansas, for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club.