ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
During the height of the pandemic, Sayre Quevedo started recording his phone calls - all of them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SAYRE QUEVEDO, BYLINE: I'm recording. I hope that is OK.
CONNOR QUEVEDO: Oh, really? OK. Yeah. All right.
NADWORNY: That's him speaking to his twin brother, Connor Quevedo, who clearly found Sayre's recordings a little strange. But this isn't really all that weird. After all, Sayre is an audio journalist and podcast producer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
C QUEVEDO: Are you recording 'cause you want to talk about dad stuff?
S QUEVEDO: Yeah. Well, not just because of that, but yeah.
NADWORNY: Talking about Dad - it's not a light subject. That's because Sayre and Connor had never met their biological father. But then, on the eve of their 30th birthday, the twins set out to find him. And along the way, they confront the truths they've hidden from each other and themselves. The story is told in Sayre Quevedo's new podcast, Reaching Out, from NPR member station KCRW and Futuro Media. Sayre Quevedo, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
S QUEVEDO: Thank you for having me.
NADWORNY: So at the start of this story, your brother was very gung-ho about reaching out to find your father. And you kind of felt differently. There's a moment in the first episode that I think really showcases these kind of two different stances. Connor had just found new details about him, and he shared them with you. Connor you're going to hear first. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
C QUEVEDO: I mean, how do you feel about it?
S QUEVEDO: I feel good about it. Yeah. I feel good about it.
C QUEVEDO: 'Cause for me, I feel - like, the first day that we kind of got the info, I was like, I'm kind of excited.
NADWORNY: The thing, Sayre, is you were not that excited, right? I mean, why did you feel so reserved in that moment?
S QUEVEDO: I think, for me, I'd sort of told myself that I had made peace. As I entered into my 20s, I kind of made this choice in a lot of ways that I just didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to feel hurt by it. I didn't want it to be something that consumed any part of my mind. So I just was not going to think about it ever again. And I think the part of me that was reserved, and especially in that moment, was sort of maybe unconsciously aware, like, you didn't really actually ever fully bury that thing. You don't get to decide that things don't matter to you anymore. You don't get to sort of just move on from them. And so I think I was resistant, but of course, I could hear how excited my twin was. And so I think that was ultimately what ended up motivating me to go through with it, despite my own sort of reticence.
NADWORNY: And maybe gave you permission in some ways.
S QUEVEDO: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think the invitation of seeing my twin's bravery in that moment certainly gave me a little bit and knowing I wasn't doing it alone.
NADWORNY: Well, there's a lot of humor in a lot of the ways that you tell this story. One part that I really thought was quite delightful (laughter) was when you were describing sifting through a sea of strange men online that had the same name as your father, kind of trying to figure out which one could be him.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
S QUEVEDO: You have tabs open to several potential fathers on Facebook - a series of white men in rimless or squared sunglasses with varied hairlines in gradient pallid shades. Your top contender sports a buzz cut and a pair of gas station sunglasses. He's an amateur photographer who takes pictures of animals at the zoo.
NADWORNY: It must be just so absurd and, like, kind of strange to be doing that, but then you deliver it in such a funny way. Help me understand that.
S QUEVEDO: Yeah. All of it is a little bit absurd, right? Like - and I think that moment of sitting in front of all of these pictures of different men with different professions, with different styles, with different, you know, faces, it made clear the absurdity of the sort of lottery of the parents that we get...
NADWORNY: Yeah.
S QUEVEDO: ...Right? That, like, we don't really get a choice. But in this instance - right? - there's a moment where it feels like there's a choice - right? - where you have 20 different men sitting in front of you that you're like, any one of these men could be my father. And it is - it's absurd.
NADWORNY: (Laughter).
S QUEVEDO: Yeah. It's absurd, and it's funny. And so I think there's a lot of that.
NADWORNY: Another person I want to talk to you about, Sayre, is your mom. So she features really heavily in the story. And at one point, we hear you discussing you and your brother's effort to find your dad, which is obviously really complex for her.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
S QUEVEDO: I don't know how - I mean, how do I feel about it? It's hard to say, you know?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Well, I love you guys, and I hope that you get what you need from it. And yeah, I'm glad you're doing it together.
S QUEVEDO: You've avoided talking to your mom about looking until now. It's not that you don't trust her to support you. You know she will. That's the problem. The locus of her attention has always been on the pain that your father's absence created for you. If she feels anything about it, she will do her best not to impose it on you.
NADWORNY: I guess my question for you about your mom is, you know, how did your relationship change? Or, like, in making the podcast and then listening back to it, what came up for you, like, related to your mom?
S QUEVEDO: Yeah. You know, through the process of telling this story, the landscape opened up emotionally of my family and to realize that while it affected me, absolutely, my mom was there also. And, like, what did that abandonment feel like for her? It gave me so much empathy for her, to be put in that situation in which you are trying to give as much love as you possibly can to your children and to have this thing that feels so threatening to, perhaps, their way of looking at themselves is an extremely painful and an extremely complex position to be put in. And so I think it gave me even more love and respect for her because it is such a difficult position to be put in.
NADWORNY: In many ways, this story is less about your father and kind of more about you and Connor as brothers - your similarities, of course, but also your differences, that special kind of love that you share. What did this journey teach you about brotherhood, about being a twin?
S QUEVEDO: I think you're right. The search for my father, in some ways, ended up being almost sort of a Trojan horse for the search and trying to understand so many other parts of my family and so many other parts of my life. And I think, in particular, with my brother - you know, I'm 33 now. And so to walk alongside somebody for that long, you know, you start to sort of organize these stories around who they are and what they represent.
And so I think what I have learned through the process of telling the story is that my twin is a person - a full, complex, contradictory, wonderful, layered human being. That was the big thing that I learned through this is, like, you know, not just my twin but all of my family members. They're just people, and they have fears and desires and complexities and incoherences that are beautiful and interesting and meaningful and that are more rich when I'm able to just sort of stand back and appreciate them for what they are, instead of sort of attaching a story to them about my family or about myself.
NADWORNY: Sayre Quevedo, thank you so much for chatting with us today.
S QUEVEDO: Thank you so much for having me.
NADWORNY: Sayre Quevedo's new podcast is called Reaching Out, from NPR member station KCRW and Futuro Media. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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