Wendy's Letter
I was on the phone with my friend Wendy, talking to her about this website, as I've done many times before. I wanted to know what to do with it, and I was hoping she could offer me some insight like she had in the past. It had been years since I’d been to her house for a cup of tea to talk about life. By now, the topic of this website had mainly died down, quenched by the busyness of our current lives.
I had abandoned my website, deleted many parts, and left it to drift alone untouched in the internet universe. I didn't know what to do with it.
While on the phone with Wendy, I multi-tasked and cleaned my closet. I was spring cleaning, trying to make room in my house and throw out unnecessary stuff. I found a peculiar-looking envelope between a pile of expired papers. It was square and black with white polka dots on it.
"Hey, I found that letter you sent me once!" I said.
"What letter?" She didn't remember, so I described it to her. Her sister, Laurie, who had passed away years ago, had made it by hand. She had spent significant time on it; it was made with great love and care.
"Oh yeah!" She brightened up. I described how the letter worked. Inside it, you found a smaller square, which hid inside it an even smaller square, and the squares continued to shrink until you got to the very last one. That last one opened, and a handwritten text appeared: "Just a little note." A smiley face accompanied it.
"You know what? Let me take a picture and text it to you," I said. I thought that Wendy wanted to see her sister's letter one last time.
And that's what I did. But the funny thing is, as I took pictures of each square and sent them to Wendy, her voice began to disappear.
"Are you hearing me alright?" I asked. I'm used to connectivity issues in my mobile home, so this wasn't anything unusual.
"Yes, I can hear you, " Wendy said. But I couldn't hear her all that well.
"Hmm," I said. "I wonder if something's going on with your earpiece?" That was usually the next thing. "Okay, let me move around. Can you hear me now?"
But Wendy insisted that she could hear me just fine.
So I kept snapping pictures of these mini-envelopes, and each time I moved to a smaller envelope, Wendy's voice got smaller.
"Wait a minute," I said. "I'm really having trouble hearing you. Are you sure you're hearing me okay? How can I not hear you, but you can still hear me?
Wendy mumbled on the other end, but I could barely hear her. At this point, I had reached the last square. I opened it, saw the note, and took a picture.
"I'm sending the last one now, Wendy," I said.
She squeaked back at me. And when I say squeaked, I mean squeaked, like a tiny, little church mouse because that's how ridiculously tiny her voice was. It was as if her voice came from the bottom of a barrel and as if this tiny mouse was trying to squeak with all its might, but the tiny little voice didn't carry through the barrel.
Yeah, I'm going to have to call her back, I thought.
"Well, I sent the last one," I said.
"Yes, I got all of them," Wendy responded, her voice suddenly returning to normal and clear as day.
"Wait, I can hear you again!" I rejoiced.
"I could hear you all this time," Wendy said. She didn't quite understand what I was going on about.
"Wendy, your VOICE!!!" I exclaimed. "It followed the size of the squares! It got proportionally SMALLER and SMALLER and SMALLER and SMALLER and SMALLER and SMALLER each time I moved from one envelope to the next. Isn't that crazy?!!!"
"It is," she chuckled.
She's used to the crazy things that happen when we get together.
"Think about it! How your voice got smaller? Wendy!'
"What an Alice-in-Wonderland-kind-of-thing to happen!"
"I know."
"Remember how I said that I wanted a message regarding my website? Remember how I said that?"
"Yes."
"Wendy, I feel like I got my message. This was it. I don't know if I know what the exact, concrete meaning of the message was, and I wonder if it even matters. No, the details don't matter. All I know is the direction that I need to go. Now I know which way I need to go on my path. And I know that this Alice in Wonderland stuff is on my path. I know it's important. I just know that I need to do this."
