And then there was this place where I’d get my coffee every morning. It was a self-serve, and there were many choices to be made that ironically kind of needed coffee before making those choices. But for me this was never about coffee. This was an altar, a wishing well. My dream girl, my future wife: where would she come from? I’d go heavy on the Brazil, because Brazil always connected with me. I’d squirt in some Mexico, for soulfulness, for la familia. A squirt of France, for swish and swirl. Some Ethiopia. Hawaii, of course. Etc. Jim Morrison sang, “Build me a woman make her ten feet tall,” and I was doing something like this, though it was more like prayer.

And the Brazilian wife came, amazingly enough.

So now I tell my 11 kids — Flavia in Recife, Miguel in Mexico City, Justin in Cape Town, Yoko and Shuji in Kyoto, et al — I tell them, ‘Select your coffee carefully. These are not small decisio