Go Ask Alice

One woman's trip through the looking glass as a kids' holiday party attraction.

by Laura Lewis

In photo albums and frames and on refrigerators throughout the Philadelphia region there are shots of me in a frumpy baby blue outfit with white tights and black Mary Janes, posing with little girls in party dresses. It's a secret from my past that my own children don't know about yet. Before I was a mommy, I was Alice.

This was in the mid-'90s. I was the assistant to the head of the catering sales department at the Four Seasons hotel. As an eager new employee and a blonde, I was tapped to play Alice at the hotel's popular kids' holiday party, Tea in Wonderland.

My introduction to the event had been a ridiculously long phone conversation with a woman who couldn't get through to the special phone number that is set up to take registration for the tea. Despite occurring every weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the tea always sells out. She now wanted to talk to my boss, with whom she'd done business before, to get in anyway. She was polite but insistent, as people who are used to getting their way often are. I'm not sure what the result of her conversation was, but she probably got what she wanted. At the Four Seasons, rarely is the answer no.

Imagining a room full of women like this and their equally self-absorbed daughters, I was prepared to hate my new part-time job. It didn't help that I'm not exactly what you would call an extrovert. Oh, and did I mention that I wouldn't be paid? Compensation was to be dinner for two in The Fountain, the hotel's restaurant -- not bad, but not cash, either.

But then I got there and saw the kids. Girls, mostly, all dolled up, many nearly giddy with excitement. Over me. For the first time I was on the receiving end of that almost mystical connection children seem to have with adults in costumes -- the odd blend of awareness and acceptance of the ruse, manifested either as shoe-gazing shyness bordering on genuine terror or an overwhelming desire to talk to the character about anything and everything. Fortunately for me, the latter was far more common.

Truly, I was Alice.

They commented on my dress -- positively, for the most part -- and told me about their own outfits, many of which appeared to cost more than my entire wardrobe. They touched my hair (some of the older ones, I think, were making sure it was real). They told me their names, and their friends' names and siblings' names and their American Girl dolls' names, and prattled on about their lives. One girl picked up where she'd left off in a conversation with "me" in Disney World. They were absolutely adorable. I would have taken any number of them home.

Many mentioned that they'd been to the tea before, and in my second and third years as the star of the show they would mention, sometimes quite excitedly, that they recognized me. (This seemed to please the mothers, too.) But the ones I was most enamored of were the girls who clearly didn't attend real tea parties, at least not in places like the Four Seasons, very often. Their wide-eyed joy and almost deferential demeanor contrasted sharply with the relative sophistication of the girls for whom this was nothing new, the girls who'd probably someday be having their wedding receptions there. I guess I could relate to having a vague sense of being somewhere you don't belong, even if no one is trying to make you feel that way, and I went out of my way to make those girls feel welcome and special. More than one sat on my lap or held my hand during the performance by dancers from the Pennsylvania Ballet.

My second year as Alice, I was six months pregnant. The long, concealing dress hid it well, and only one mother, a nurse, noticed. The following year that same mother asked what I'd had, and my husband brought our son to one of the teas. By then I'd left the hotel for a part-time job with regular hours, and not only was I still not being paid to play Alice, my compensation had been downgraded to a free brunch. It was time to let another young blonde fill those shoes.

My hair is red now. I have two sons, but unless knights and dinosaurs have been added to the tea since I left, I don't see either of them sitting through it. Don't get me wrong, I adore them. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss stepping into that role. As we age we forget what it's like to believe that someone in a costume is the real thing, but inspiring that willing suspension of disbelief in kids is just as much fun. I never had to force a smile for any of those pictures.

This year's remaining Tea in Wonderland events are sold out, but there is a waiting list for Dec. 21 and 26-28, 3-4:30 p.m. Call 215-963-1500 for details.