serendipitous snail mail

The first postcard arrived the day I turned 17.

On the front was a photo of a beach -- not one that I could recognize, and there was nothing, no location name or anything, to give any indication of where it could be.

On the back were the words

"Happy Birthday,

Love, Dad (and Alex)"

as well as a name and address, but it wasn't addressed to me.

The address was mine, yes, but the name was not.

"Martin Deane" it said, in rough, informal writing.

I had never met anyone named Martin Deane, and neither had my parents, and my house had been part of a recent housing development, so we were the only people to have ever lived here. There was no return address, so I left it in a box with the plan to at least ask my neighbours if anyone knew a Martin Deane.

Unfortunately, it would ultimately be left there, forgotten about, until I turned 18.

------

The second postcard arrived much like the first -- with very little fanfare.

My 18th birthday fell on a Sunday, and I was surprised that there was even any mail at all. When I saw the front, however, I knew what had arrived.

This time, the photo depicted a scene that I recognized. It was another beach, but this beach was Pantai Merah, the pink beach, on Komodo Island in Indonesia. I had done a school project on it once, fascinated by the strange colour of the sand.

The back was much the same. The same message, the same address, the same name.

I grabbed the first postcard from where it lay, buried under other various objects that had accumulated over the year, and compared the two.

The handwriting was the same.

It was hard to pass it up as a coincidence. Hard to write it off as nothing and continue with my day. But it was even harder to come up with any plausible explanation, so I didn’t. I didn’t do anything. I just tucked it away again, and hoped that my next birthday would be postcard free

------

By the time my 19th birthday had arrived, I was living somewhere else.

I had never been close to my family, and so when I was presented with a job opportunity that was on the opposite side of the country, I didn’t even think twice about leaving behind everything and everyone I had ever known.

I was hoping to leave the postcards behind, too.

However, on the morning of my 19th birthday, I was not surprised when a postcard slipped into my mailbox.

The photo was of a forest.

The name on the back was still "Martin Deane".

The message was the same.

The address, now this confused me.

The address was that of my new address.

So, it was not someone writing the wrong name or the wrong address on a postcard directed for someone they knew -- this was at least partially intentional.

Whilst some questions were answered by the presence of this postcard in my hands, many more seemed to appear, fracturing around me like glass.

I needed to figure this mystery out.

------

I booked the first flight to Komodo Island.

As soon as I stepped off the plane, I made my way to the pink beach, searching for somewhere that would sell postcards, and miraculously found them being sold at a hotel.

With some well-asked questions (and a little bit of bribery), I got the names and address of a man and his daughter, Alex, who had stayed at this hotel the year I received the postcard, and off I went.

------

The man and his daughter lived in Melbourne, Sydney, and the house I arrived at, still exhausted from the multiple plane trips and extreme jet lag, postcards in hand, was simple, with signs of run-down.

I knocked, and waited.

A woman my age opened the door.

"Alex?" I asked, and held up the postcards.

Her eyes widened, and she gulped. "Sorry," she led me inside, taking me to a living room, "I think I have some explaining to do."

------

Alex explained.

She explained that her brother, Martin, had died 3 years ago. That their father had been distraught after their mother died, so Alex had told him that Martin had just moved away, to a completely different country.

She'd told him a random address, and tried to make sure he never sent 'Martin' any letters.

She explained that even before Martin had died, her family had gone overseas every year to celebrate his birthday, and she'd told her dad three years in a row that Martin was too busy to come, but encouraged him to send a birthday postcard, hoping that whoever lived at that random address would just ignore the postcards.

When her dad started planning a holiday to go visit Martin, she told him that he'd moved, to a location that was much more expensive to live in.

I told her about the coincidences.

About the matching birthdays and matching addresses, and although neither of us could explain it, we both felt that it was fate that we had met.

I told her to tell her father the truth.

------

She told him, and introduced him to me, and he was devastated, but eventually he forgave Alex.

I stayed with the Deane family for a few months, helping to repair the burnt bridges between father and daughter, mostly by being there for support.

Alex and I spent time together, and fell in love.

By the time I'd turned 20, we had married, taking our honeymoon on the pink sands of Komodo Island.

She took my last name.

And when we were ready for kids, we decided to adopt.

We decided to go through a surrogate.

And when the birth mother gave birth to twins, and we allowed her to name them herself before passing them to us, she said

"Martin," for the oldest (by 14 and a half minutes),and

"Dean," for the youngest. "I've always loved those names."

And what could we do but agree with fate?