Through the Apartment Door

My dearest incurable humanist,

I was growing very tired of the questions about brushwork and prices, about what it all meant. Another long Saturday at the gallery had blurred by, with my body present but my mind miles away. Like Alice on the riverbank, drowsy with disinterest, I felt suspended between waking and wandering, aching for something beyond the polite rituals of art talk and small talk. I’d already showered, slipped into pajamas, and surrendered to the quiet when the phone rang around 9:30 PM, July 31st, 2021. A date that would later become a breadcrumb on the trail back to myself.

"You need to read this book," Lara said, her voice cutting through the static of our international connection. Lara is my designated New York mother and or big sister. One of those rare people who become family not through blood but through pure intention. "But don't read it. Listen to it. Trust me on this."

The book was Gabby Bernstein's The Universe Has Your Back. I rolled my eyes at the title alone. Ask the Universe for signs? Channel divine guidance? It sounded like the kind of spiritual bypassing that made my rational mind recoil. But Lara had never steered me wrong, and something about living in Mexico City had cracked me open in ways I was only beginning to understand. So, I bought the audiobook. What happened next transformed everything.

I became obsessed. Not with the book but with the feeling it gave me. I'd put on my AirPods during those long Uber rides from Santa Fe to San Miguel Chapultepec, watching the city as Gabby's voice filled the space between my thoughts. During lunch breaks, I'd escape the gallery, grab a coffee, and wander the cobblestone streets, her words mixing with the sounds of street vendors and distant music.

My energy began to shift in ways I couldn't explain. I'd been living in Mexico City in denial, longing for New York. The book taught me something radical: trust the process, even when or especially when you can't see where it's leading. Bernstein writes about asking the Universe for signs, specific markers that would be unmistakable when they appeared. The skeptic in me scoffed, but the part of me that had been transformed by Mexico's magic whispered: What if?

If I was going to do this, I decided, I wasn't going to ask for something ordinary. No red cars or butterflies. I wanted something so specific, so impossible to miss, that if it showed up, there would be no question it was meant for me. And then I knew exactly what to ask for.

Alice in Wonderland isn't just my favorite Disney movie; it's a story that shaped me. As a child, I'd spend hours at Alice's Teacup in Manhattan, pretending I was falling down the rabbit hole. I devoured every version of the books, from Carroll's original to modern retellings. But it was in high school that Alice truly changed my life. I was the ultimate introvert, the outlier who ate lunch alone and spoke only when called upon. Then came the school play auditions. Somehow, impossibly, I landed the role of Alice. The transformation was miraculous. The shy girl who could barely order food at the cafeteria was suddenly commanding the stage, fearless and bold. It was such a revelation that a local radio station interviewed me about the experience.

Alice had taught me that sometimes you must fall down the rabbit hole to find who you are. And when Alice gets lost in Wonderland, whom does she ask for directions? The Cheshire Cat! That grinning, philosophical creature who appears and disappears at will, offering cryptic wisdom. If Alice could ask the Cheshire Cat where to go when she was lost, why couldn't I do the same? Walking those Mexico City streets, headphones on, heart open, I made my request: "Universe, show me the Cheshire Cat when I find true love."

Fast forward to 2022. I'm back in New York, and the trusting process has worked its magic in unexpected ways. I’m seeing someone new, or rather, someone familiar in a new light. We had circled each other for years, through false starts and blurred lines: sort-ofs, maybes, almosts. Friends, lovers, not-quite-anythings. The story’s too tangled to unravel here. But by December, something settles. We’re dating dating. The first time I visit his apartment (officially, this time), I’m nervous. First visits always feel like auditions for a life you’re not sure you want yet. I climb the stairs, and then I stop. I’ve been here before. Not just metaphorically—I mean here. This hallway. This door. I don’t remember the cat being there then, but maybe he was. Maybe everything was. But it’s only now, that I see it. And this time, it feels different. There, perched on top of his apartment door, placed there by a neighbor with impeccable timing and no knowledge of my cosmic request, sits a stuffed Cheshire Cat. Not just any cat, but the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Time stops. The world tilts. Every skeptical thought I've ever had about signs and synchronicity evaporates in the face of that impossible, perfect grin. Standing there in that hallway, I understood something profound: the Universe is listening. It places Cheshire Cats on doors at precisely the moment you need to see them.

You can call it a coincidence. You can say I was primed to notice because I'd made the request. You can argue that in a city of eight million people, someone was bound to have an Alice in Wonderland decoration. Maybe you're right. But here's what I know: in that moment, seeing that cat felt like coming home. It felt like the Universe saying: “Here it is.”

And the Universe was right. That someone became my husband. That apartment became our home. That Cheshire Cat still grins down at us every day, a reminder of the magic that happens when we're brave enough to ask for what we want and wise enough to recognize the answer when it arrives.

I'll be honest, I sometimes forget this story. Life gets busy, reality gets loud, and that Saturday night in Mexico City feels like something that happened to someone else. The faith that carried me through that transformative time gets buried under deadlines and disappointments and the general heaviness of being human.

But when I remember to remember, when I reconnect with that trust in the process, life becomes lighter. Smoother. Full of possibilities. It's not about believing in magic, it's about believing in the magic that's already there, waiting for us to notice.

The Cheshire Cat taught Alice that we're all mad here, but perhaps that's exactly what makes life interesting. Perhaps the madness is in thinking we're not connected to something larger, something that's always trying to guide us home.

What signs have you asked for? And more importantly, are you paying attention to the answers? Because I promise you, they're there. Grinning down at you from the most unexpected places, waiting for you to look up and see.

P.S. - In that golden afternoon light streaming through our window, I finally understood what Alice knew all along: the most extraordinary adventures begin the moment we stop being too tired to believe in impossible things.