Allison Wonderland

Allison was always close with her mother.

Every morning when Alice woke up she always prepared the water over the stove. When it whistled to announce that the water had come to a boil, it was Allison's alarm and she would run down from her bedroom upstairs into the kitchen to sit down at the breakfast table. It was their routine; the way a mother and daughter bond.

For breakfast, it was always different. Some days it was scrambled eggs with a hint of sugar to satisfy Allison's unbearable sweet tooth or two pieces of toast spread with homemade strawberry jam. On rare occasions, but always on her birthday, were waffles topped with every sweet topping in the house. And that was Allison's favorite.

It was August and Allison was turning thirteen. Her mother had prepared her the cake-like waffle and set it at her favorite seat just before the kettle whistled and her tiny feet could be heard moving around upstairs. It was also the day children went back to school so she had prepared all her school things in her knapsack and set it down beside her on the floor, pulling out a lone purple notebook.

"What is that notebook for?" Alice had asked as she poured the two cups of tea that Allison was eagerly waiting for, "Did they already give you an assignment before school even starts?"

Allison shook her head as she took a sip of the boiling hot tea, much to her mother's dismay, and licked her lips of the stray droplets, "We had a summer project that I never did. I know I should have, mommy, but summer is for fun and not for school."

Alice laughed as she watched Allison delve into the waffle and set the notebook on the side, "Well, what is it for?"

"Family history," she muttered through a mouthful of waffles, "I need to learn about us!"

As her face dropped, Alice cleared her throat and looked into the waves that appeared as she set her tea back down on the table. "Family history," she repeated, and she could feel her mouth tense around the word family, "What... what kind of things about us?"

She wiped her mouth with a napkin before turning the cover of her notebook over and peering at the words she had scribbled at the top, "'Write about your family and the great things they did. Include a family three of up to three generations for extra credit.' That means I have to write about daddy too, don't I?"

Alice licked her lips and nodded her head, "I suppose. There... there isn't quite anything that our family has done that's great." She stopped for a moment, looked over as Allison waiting with her hand poised to write and let out a little huff of breath, "I guess your father was one of the town's leading doctors. Charles Hanson was his name. He was in fact a great fellow. There was Leslie and James Hanson, your grandparents. James... well grandpa was a contractor and grandma was the nurse. That was how your father got into medicine, through your grandma."

She furiously wrote along with her mother's words, and stopped when her own mother stopped. "What about you mom?"

Alice didn't say anything at first, and Allison had to pry farther to even get her mother to look at her, let alone open her mouth to talk about her own family history. Well, I had my parents, John and Celia. And my sister Amelia of course. Our family though was nothing but rich bureaucrats who ran most of the towns and were unbelievably snobby."

She laughed at those words, knowing from experience as she had spent countless summers with her mother at the home that Alice had grown up in, "What about you mommy? Did you do anything great?"

Suddenly rising from her seat, Alice bit her bottom lip. "I had no interesting back story. Before I was pregnant, I was a schoolteacher but I prefer my time at the nursery at Olivia's Greenhouse in town. Being a florist is just far more interesting to me than teaching a bunch of uncontrollable children how to do multiplication and aid in their penmanship."

Before Allison could finish her cake day waffles, her mother was already rushing her out of the house.

"I do not want you late for school," Alice had said when Allison complained, "I know very well that teachers would not like that!"

xxx

By sixteen, Allison had dropped most of her morning rituals and was no longer energized enough to be awoken by the sound of the kettle going. It left Alice time to sit in the kitchen and sip her tea, read a book, or browse through the town's newsprint, something she had never found herself to do, and waited for Allison to inevitably head down the steps an hour usually after the tea was already cold and downed it in one go, before kissing her mother on the head and quickly heading out, barely even saying a word to her much less showing that she even acknowledged her presence.

"I have grown," Allison had said to her mother when they had sat down for Alice to give her her gift, "I do not have much time or energy to do those silly morning rituals we once had, mother."

Alice had not said anything in response, but instead, handed over the small delicate box over in Allison's direction, "For you."

She had opened the box, peered inside, and found a little key necklace that sparkled in the light coming in through the living room window, and Alice felt a swell of pride when she moved to put it around her neck. "It's lovely, mother. One of the loveliest gifts in the world. Is it a key to something?"

With a smile, Alice said, "A key to my heart."