Yesterday was my
birthday, and it was all very wonderful – out to dinner in Jacksonville and then off for a backpacking trip to the Russian Wilderness Area this morning
– but the real glow still lingers from my Alice-in-Wonderland birthday party
two years ago. It was a mad-as-a-hatter good time thanks to everyone who came
and everyone who helped make it such a splendid success.
The
invitation announced that I was turning 70 years old on July 20 and then said, "What?!
I must have fallen down a rabbit hole!” (It's still the feeling I get.)
The day before the party my out-of-town guests and some other friends and I set up wickets for the croquet game my son created. Here are the Wonderful Weeding Woman Wicket, the What! Wicket (in the shape of a question mark), and the World Wide Web Wicket.
Among others were the Loud Wicket
and, my favorite, the Walking Wicket.
The next
morning I put on a white dress and the Queen of Hearts crown my daughter-in-law
made for me (with a red shawl till the weather warmed up).
Everyone else
wore white, too, by suggestion of the invitation.
They looked beautiful, flitting around the woods, looking for rabbit holes.
The Mad Hatter had left plenty of hats for people to put on.
The invitation
had also suggested people bring their own mallets and balls for the croquet
game. They were every bit as good as Alice's flamingo and hedgehog:
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of croquet on a mountainside.
The Mad Hatter dinner was a potluck picnic with music provided by Ela on his Stamenphone, Wonderland music if ever there was such.
After dinner there were toasts and speeches
and “The Ringing of the Bell,” my
reading of a list of highlights of my life, with Ela ringing the bell from my
great-grandfather’s foundry at every year, by which number of rings we could
all feel how long seventy years is. My brother held the bell.
Then I selected nine women friends to be my court to help me carry the tarts I had made in the weeks preceding the party – 95 tarts, eleven different
kinds – down to the guests. “Here come the tarts!” Ela announced as the ten women in white made a
procession from the house to the picnic area.
The crowds waited eagerly as the court posed for pictures.
It was, all in all, a frabjous day.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at
the video Ela made.
the
password is:
wonderland
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