The WHAT IF of it all: Pride & Coffee
This is me in early December in a Toronto recording studio talking with This American Life host, Ira Glass. My smile is genuine—I wasn’t nervous at all. In fact, I enjoyed our conversation! Ira was authentic, engaging, and funny, just like when he hosts the show. My interview opened the episode, The Ghost in the Machine which aired the first weekend of January 2022.
Alas, although we talked for nearly an hour, I am on the show for mere minutes! There were many moments from our interview that I wish could have been included, but there was one where Ira caught me off guard and I’m grateful it didn’t make the cut. It has been bothering me ever since. I had been telling him that I’ve listened to my birth father’s recordings so often that I can now conjure his voice in my head at will, despite having only met him a few times as an infant 56 years ago. “Really?” Ira said, sounding more incredulous and surprised than I was expecting, “What does he say to you?”
Urgh. It seemed silly to tell him about the coffee making, but it was all I could think of to blurt in response, and I didn’t blurt it well either. I often imagine my father when I make my morning coffee. It is no boil and pour event—this is a multi-stage, aromatic choreography of precision and love. One that could fail in an instant if the proper finesse is not applied. Grinding the beans, tamping the grounds, watching the dial, adjusting the frothing wand, I can hear my father commenting in wonder, “What’s this? Why so many steps? Do you know the coffee we drank in the old days was just botz (mud) at the bottom of our cups?” And then, I imagine him saying in an awed voice, “A life like yours, with such complicated coffee—Michal*, it makes me happy that you’re not struggling as I did.”
I’ve thought about the meaning of these made-up coffee scenes often since my TAL interview. Those tapes I heard for the first time in 2018 allowed me access to him in a way that I never believed possible. And once I had access, I could fantasize: What if? What if he were still alive? How would I be different? What would he say to me? And, of course: Would he be proud of me?
If I had had the wherewithal to articulate it to Ira, I would have told him that such daydreams (though maybe not of the coffee variety) are natural for adoptees and anyone else who has grown up with one or both parents absent and unknown to them. But that wasn’t the focus of the interview, so maybe it’s just as well.
And so, I’ll continue with my imaginings, because in their strange and ineffable ways, they keep me grounded. (Excuse the pun!) I may be making a fancy coffee, but that little girl inside me will never stop wondering what it might be like to have my birth father’s company, admiration, and pride.
*Michal (מיכל) is my Hebrew name
