Coffee first came onto my scene when I was six,
courtesy of a pair of Australian expats packing
their bags. My parents got a modest countertop
machine. I got Peter Slater’s 1999 pocket planner,
Australian Birds; a treasury of song and feathers;
a hardback sliver of a book I would carry with me
from one continent to the next, always about to become
an ornithologist, an Audubon, a better bird-watcher.
How quickly medium-roast became integral to
mornings! That Christmas, we had to wait for more
than the mellowing glow of sunrise to fill our windows.
On the floor in the family room we sat under the
winking tree and waited for steam and drip to end
in gurgle and snort and velvet aroma. And on every
January first of childhood, I would weigh the same
question: could this be the year to use Australian Birds?
Thumbing its glossy pages, I didn’t mind that 1999 was
past recall, that it would be 11 years before another
April 12 Easter. But something is unsettling about a
flag-planting. It’s brash, too sure of the moment.
Today I pay the rent with paintbrushes. Sometimes
I accidentally rinse them in the tall latte next to my
water cup. I reassure myself that watercolors aren’t
toxic. I am occasionally embarrassed by how little
I have learned about Australia. On my last birthday,
we waited for our drinks under a wall map delineating
the world’s coffee-growing regions, wondered aloud
about the omission of Australia’s southern side.
Are there cold patches in the sunburnt country? What
makes the galahs go pink? Where are the shelducks
winging to, so chestnut and so green? Their beaks
are turned into the squall. They are breasting a
deepening grey, but they do not seem worried. If I
was like them, I could say goodbye to you every day
without this black pebble in my throat. Can you guess
why the stormy petrel carries Saint Peter’s name?
As a child I confess I smuggled Peter Slater over the
ocean more than once, fitting him into my suitcase
among folded layers of denim and cotton tees.
Once you find joy, you want it always beside you.