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I bought Josh a copy of Circe by Madeline Miller at a used book sale. It was in perfect shape; the jacket pristine and the pages clean. If someone read the copy, they did so neatly. As in very neatly. They were clearly a book lover.

One night, Josh came in the room and tossed a photo onto the bed. “This fell out of the book while I was reading it.” ChickieNob and I looked at the picture. It was a family — seven people in all — posing on a Jaws-themed set, pretending a shark was about to eat them.

The picture, like the book, was in pristine shape, tucked inside a cardstock folder labeled Cinespia and printed by Amazon. We Googled it — it’s an organization that hosts viewings of classic films out in Los Angeles. Jaws had been shown back in June.

Over the next day or two, we kept going back to the picture, unsure of what we should do. I asked the used book organization. They thought the book was probably donated by someone in Maryland, but it could have come from anywhere in the United States. For instance, it could have been from Los Angeles, where the picture was clearly printed.

“You could post the picture on Facebook,” the ChickieNob offered. “Maybe with a message like, ‘Hey, I have your family photo. Do you want it back?'”

Because they kind of looked like an awesome family who was having the best time with one another. I thought about how this was why I thumbed through each book I returned or donated a dozen times; because I was so afraid to leave anything behind. Plus the picture was from an event and it looked expensive.

Then one night, Josh came back in the bedroom and dropped a boarding pass on the bed. “Another clue.” At that point, we asked him to thumb through the book for any other slips of paper, but these two items were the only things tucked into the crisp pages. The boarding pass had a name on it and a date for the flight, one day after the date for the movie.

I Googled the name and found two people with the same name: one in Los Angeles (promising!) and one in Maryland (promising, too!) The one in Maryland had her work email address listed on a website, but the Los Angeles one did not, so I decided to start with the Maryland one.

She wrote back the next day saying that it certainly sounded like her photo. We made plans to meet at a Starbucks so I could reunite her with her photo and boarding pass. (Okay, maybe she didn’t need the boarding pass, but it does make a handy bookmark.)

The woman was lovely and told me the story of the photo. It had been the only four days her three children could get together over the course of the whole year. One was living on the west coast, one had been traveling through Vietnam, and one was in medical school. The family met in Los Angeles and went to the movie together on the last night. This was the only copy of this photo, capturing a silly moment for their reunited family. I was so happy that I got it back in her hands.

There’s not really a point to this story because I ultimately reunited the photo with its owner without needing the help of the Internet, unless you count that quick Google session. It’s more a PSA to take your bookmarks out of your books before you return them. AND it’s a PSA to buy used books because you never know what you’ll find inside.

Thank you, random person, for gifting us with a fun two-day mystery.

“Do you think the kangaroos are my destiny?” I whispered to Josh while we were falling asleep.

“No,” he answered back.

“I think they’re my destiny,” I told him.

*******

My friend Sarah told me about the kangaroo sanctuary. It’s actually not just kangaroos. The woman has wallabies and sugar gliders and degus and emus. But the focus is on the kangaroos. And maybe sanctuary is the wrong term. Maybe kangaroo ranch? In any case, it’s an education kangaroo space.

Sarah and I were talking about what I’m going to do with myself when the twins go to college. I am in a constant state of thinking about possible hobbies and volunteer work. I was telling her how we’re going to become birders, despite knowing nothing about birds, and that I was going to start volunteering with the ornithological society. “It’s not ideal,” I told her, “mostly because I’m not totally in love with birds, but volunteering for the zoo — what I really want to do — is too hard because it’s so far away.”

“Why don’t you volunteer at the kangaroo sanctuary. That’s right near your house.”

Kangaroo sanctuary? How have I never heard of this place?

She opened her phone and showed me photos of her daughter petting a kangaroo. The woman takes the animals on the road for educational events, but you can also visit the ranch and play with the animals while you learn about macropods. Plus, they need volunteers to clean out the habitats.

Check out the little joey sticking out of her pouch!

I was born to clean. That is my passion. When I was a kid, I mucked stalls and groomed horses once a week at the stable where I rode. My favourite job ever was dishwasher at a cafe. I have cleaning supplies all over my house so I can be in a constant state of cleaning.

The only way I can explain how in felt to learn about this place was with that part in The Magicians when Penny brought the button to Quentin after they were both out of Brakebills and Quentin realized that his childhood dream of going to Fillory had been in his future the whole time. That is how I felt learning about this amazing space just a few minutes from my house — that the Melissa of a few weeks ago had no idea that her future contained a kangaroo sanctuary, but it clearly has always been my destiny, especially as I piece together moments of my life like a jigsaw, layering together my love of animals with my love of Australia with my love of cleaning.

I went last week for the first time. I got to hold a baby kangaroo in a carrier, stroking its velvety head while it ate leaves. We bottle-fed kangaroos and they licked treats off our hands. We peeked inside a pouch and saw a little jellybean-like kangaroo growing. There are about 30+ kangaroos on the ranch, and all but three were happy to play with us. They were so loving, and the woman who runs the ranch is brilliant and filled our brains with macropod facts.

I want to start volunteering now so I have all of my ducks in a row before the twins leave for school. I need to know that something else needs me, even if it’s just to remove poop from an enclosure. I guess you can say that I’m ready for my destiny to begin.

“A Macintosh PowerBook 160: she’d left it to me in her will, along with her books, but it had sat, plastic and inert, a thwarted life of the mind, her mind, a mind that I crammed into a box and stored in the back of the cupboard where I keep my fabric, yards of cambric and calico and gingham. So this spring I yanked it out of the cupboard and hauled it out of the box.” –“The Lingering of Loss”

The New Yorker had a piece where a friend willed the other her computer. It’s the modern-day equivalent of passing along your diary except maybe even more intimate because while diaries have stories and thoughts, computers often contain those too along with images and bookmarks and old correspondence. What someone saves says a lot about them.

The essay is a gorgeous statement on friendship and loss — I guess it’s not really a spoiler to say her best friend dies because I’ve already told you that there is a will — but I kept returning to this idea of who would want my computer. Josh will get it when I’m gone or the kids or the grandkids. I don’t know if anyone will want it; if anyone will power on the machine and poke through it. I mean, I would, if I was willed a computer, but I wonder if I’m the norm or the anomaly.

I’ve thought about my journals and my photos, my important papers from childhood and all the mementos I’ve collected over the years. But I never thought about my computers and how personal they are.

Would you give your computer to someone?

There was a recent Carolyn Hax that caught my eye, mostly because the title referenced being child-free. Except the question asker wasn’t really child-free. He was the father of a child who had died, and because his child wasn’t here, he was on the receiving end of familiar child-free comments ranging from the “you’re so lucky you don’t have kids” to the “you don’t understand” variety.

Carolyn told him to answer truthfully and respond, “‘I actually do know what it’s like’; or, ‘No, ‘lucky’ isn’t the word I’d choose.'” Which is exactly what he should do, but it made me think about why we ask for permission to tell our story.

The person who makes the comment doesn’t ask permission to make the comment. They just make an assumption and comment on the other person’s life without thinking.

[Side note: I am, by the way, separating out the thoughtless from the malicious. We all make assumptions every single day, believing we know things about the person we’re speaking to and commenting accordingly. Anyone who believes they’re sensitive and thoughtful and aren’t negatively impacting other people on a daily basis are not only fooling themselves but are the worst offenders because they won’t even admit how inadvertently hurtful they are.

I am promising you, no matter how kind you may believe me to be, I am hurting people left and right without knowing it when I post things here or walk by people in the store or––worst of all––engage in one-on-one conversations. I don’t believe there is anything we can do to avoid this except try our best to be mindful and minimize it.

It reminds me of the “Monk’s Story” in Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra, and how Ashok sweeps the ground for tiny bugs so he doesn’t negatively impact their lives by stepping on them. He crushes fewer bugs that the average person walking the same ground, but… you know… they’re tiny. He still ends up crushing bugs, even though he may not know when it happens.]

Anyway, the question asker is asking permission to answer, something that the comment maker never asks permission to do. This is a theme of advice columns: it seems people are more often asking for permission to respond vs. permission to comment. But… why are we asking permission to tell our own story? To state facts from our life?

Food for thought.

Modern Mrs. Darcy sent a newsletter in June that was one of those magical notes that you are so grateful that another person wrote. She was commenting on a picture of her library fines receipt and was taken aback that other people were surprised that she ran up library fines. She wrote, “I was surprised that some of you expected me to somehow be above the run-of-the-mill hardships of the reading life.”

She goes deeper into this, explaining that she is a reader, just like all run-of-the-mill readers, and she therefore goes through all the struggles that readers go through. She has to make reading decisions and she’s strapped for time and she finds books she loves and books she doesn’t. She has “should reads” and “want to reads” and sometimes she drops one for the other: “I read four books on vacation, but only one of them did me any good—if you’re talking about crossing titles off my TBR, or racking up books I can talk about on the podcast or Modern Mrs Darcy.”

Thank you.

I really struggle with the should reads and want to reads. There are plenty of books I feel I should read, either because they deserve attention or they contain information I want or I want to support the author, but I’ve written before about feeling guilty turning more often to my Want to Read list. Currently, they’re period-piece mysteries like Her Royal Spyness or The Mitford Murders. Not really mind-expanders but good fun that I feel like picking up at the end of the day. And I felt so down in France because I was slogging through a book I didn’t want too read but felt obligated to read.

I’m grateful she wrote, “I don’t always get this reading thing right, but I know this: rarely does a day go by where I don’t talk to some reader, somewhere, about some aspect of their reading life—and in all this talking I’ve found that we readers can be pretty hard on ourselves.”

That made all the difference. I’m not saying that I won’t feel guilty from time to time, but sometimes we just need to hear, “me too!” and not feel alone.

What are you reading right now?