Would You Want to be Alice?
Like just about every other girl of my generation, I loved the Brady Bunch. I wanted to be Marsha, the oh-so-cool and beautiful older sister, or at the very least to be as cute as little Cindy, who everyone adored. Even to be Jan, the middle daughter, would be an improvement over my bony, four-eyed, gap-toothed self. The only child in my household, I envied those sibling relationships. I wanted brothers to fight with who secretly really loved me. And, of course, I wished for such parents: kind, respectful, fair, caring, young, hip, and wealthy. Ah, the Brady's! They had it all. They even had a live-in maid. No wonder they were all smiles!
But there was one smile in the Brady household that puzzled me. Alice was neither young nor beautiful. She had no husband, no child, no car, and no home of her own. Sure, she had the occasional date with Sam, that non-committal butcher, but she spent every other waking moment in her maid’s uniform serving this family and smiling as if she were cleaning her own amazing house, as if the people she served were her own flesh and blood. As far as I was concerned, Alice had no life. Why on earth was she so happy?
Don't get me wrong, I knew this was TV and that these were actors. But even as a child, I was aware that somewhere in the world, past and present, there were and had been real servants, even real slaves. I knew that somehow these people had to find their happiness within that structure. Instinctively I knew that those who managed to do so were finer humans than I could ever hope to be. I also knew that if servanthood was required, I did not want to be that fine of a human. I'd rather be numbered among the shallow, happy elite than the joyfully humble. I loved Alice, but I didn’t want to be her.
Alice was a hold-over from a day whose sun has set. I hear our economy referred to as "service-based," but professionalism and service-with-a-smile like Alice’s are becoming relics of by-gone days. There was a time when only the elite (and men - but that's a discussion for another day) expected to be served. Now we all want to be served, but no one wants to be the servant. One of my high school yearbooks ironically pictures the two seniors voted "most likely to succeed" in the school custodian's closet holding his mop and bucket. (I wonder if the janitor knew that his life’s work was mocked by the children he served.) You see, it wasn't just me. We all wanted to be the Brady's, but we didn’t want to be Alice.
No one wants to be Alice, but no one wants to live in a world without her. No one wants to experience the poverty of a world without joyful service or the brutality of a world where service is rendered only out of greed, desperation, or fear, a world where a smile is never more than a cloak hiding a cold dark universe of swirling motives. Imagine a world with caregivers who don’t care, with employers and employees with no compassion for the people whom they are responsible to serve. Imagine if the whole world felt like the DMV.
Of course, I know there has never been a golden age filled with people like Alice. That world is as fictional as The Brady Bunch. But Alice represented an ideal, underneath which lies our hope for a more perfect world. Our affection for Alice is rooted in our deep need to be cared for, to have someone who loves us selflessly and unconditionally. But Alice also represents, should we choose to recognize it, the joy we might have if we would only give our love so selflessly.
Alice did have a life. She spent it loving freely and being loved. The Brady’s were not her family by blood, but they were by choice. They were hers by love. That is why Alice smiled. She knew how to love. She knew how to give. In this she was richer and more beautiful than them all.
“. . . whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” Mt. 20:26-28.
“Alice”, watercolor by Paul Mathers, used by permission
