Katherine in Paris

Dear Dylan,

I'm not coming home for your graduation
I'm so sorry

Love,
Mom

. . . . .

Dear Dylan,

I realize my last letter was vague
My apologies

I can't come home for your graduation
Because I'm pregnant in Paris

You're going to have a little sister

Love,
Mom

. . . . .

Dear Dylan,

This is a poem I wrote
When I found out I was pregnant--

'Another knock on the door
Another phone call to take
Another broken object
Mysteriously repaired

But does that change
The garbage
Does it take it out?

Does it make it go away?'

It's an awful poem

I was never much of a poet

That was always your forte

I hope you have a wonderful graduation

Love,
Mom

. . . . .

Dear Dylan,

I forgot to tell you
The answer
To the question
You're obviously asking yourself

'Who is the father?'

Well, it's a bit complicated

And in some ways it's not

It's your father

Your father is the father

Now, I know this sounds strange

Since I never actually told you
Who your father was
But now I can tell you a little bit more

He's Parisian
He's a poet, like you
A better poet than me
Apparently most people are

He was so thrilled to find out
You're graduating from Brown

It was quite a triumph for him
I could tell

Or, I could gather

You see, he still doesn't speak
What I would say is flawless English

In fact, he only knows a few words

The same few words he knew the last time I came to Paris

And like 'Open Sesame'
They still work like a charm

Oh...I suppose 'Open Sesame' is a bit crude
Considering...

Anyway

I decided to find him
As part of a project I'm working on

A novel about a woman
Who goes searching for son's birth father
In the most romantic city in the world

It's fiction...

...I changed names, so...

...Fiction...

I found your father a few chapters earlier
Than I would have liked

With the Internet being what it is
I was standing on the stoop of his apartment building
In just under six hours

Well, as you can imagine
That's certainly not enough
To write an entire book about
So I had to go inside
And chat with him

And before I knew it...

That was a month ago

Sorry I haven't written much

It's been quite a hectic few months...

What with losing my passport
And gong to all the cafes
And getting pregnant...

Oh Dylan
I see now
That it was a grave error in judgment
Not telling you about your father

I admit that part of the reason
I always kept silent
Was because I didn't know much about him
And what I did know
Isn't something a mother shares with her son

But now that you're older
And I've finally learned his last name
I think it's only fair
That I tell you
He's brilliant

He's simply brilliant

And we're going to be married

That's right, my darling
Your graduation present
Is the legitimization of your heritage

You're a bastard no more!

Love,
Mom

. . . . .

Dear Dylan,

It's one o'clock in the morning here
And in eleven more hours or so, your time
You'll be a college graduate

I'm up with cravings
And nausea
And inspiration

I've been cranking out chapters
Faster than ink can dry

Your father is sleeping in the next room
Underneath an afghan
I bought him at a flea market
The other day

I'd say he looks like you
But to be honest
You look like your grandfather
And your father looks like Jackson Pollock

Visceral
Raw
Original

You're better off not looking like that, Dylan
It's hard going through life
Looking like that

Are you nervous about graduating?

Are you concerned that now
You'll have to stop turning into something
And just be turned?

Turned into what?

Don't mind me, sweetheart
The hormones are taking over my mind

It's fantastic for fiction
But lousy for correspondence

I wish I could be there to see you
With your cap and gown

But your father worries about me flying
Even in such an early stage of pregnancy
What with my age and all

I'm so proud of you, Dylan

Maybe part of the reason I'm not going to be there with you
Is because graduations are a time
For parents to take credit
For the achievement of creating an amazing individual
And I didn't do that

I gave birth to you
And then I never gave you much else

Oh you thought I didn't know

You thought your mother was some crazy person
Who jettisoned herself off to Paris
Because she had a mid-life crisis
And decided for once in her life
She wanted to be relevant

Well, you're wrong

What I really wanted
Was to go back in time

I wanted to come back to Paris
And see if I could get it all right this time

Marry your father
Have you
Raise you in France
Thereby psychologically destroying your grandmother

I wanted to do it the way I should have
So that twenty-two years later
I wouldn't be sitting in some little apartment
Boiling over because your father doesn't have an air-conditioner
Writing you an e-mail
Trying to say how sorry I am

And not just about the graduation

All I can do is do it better the next time around
And I know that doesn't help you much, but...

It's really my only option

So...

I hope when she's born
You'll come out here
To see your little sister

Based on how often she kicks me
I'd say she has your temperament

...Or your grandmother's

I suppose I should close this message
With some good advice

Well, all I have to offer is this--

Find someone who makes you feel young
And in case you don't know it yet
Because you're still in the midst of youth
I'll tell you that feeling young is the feeling I get
Every time your sister lets me have it with one of her kicks

Since it's impossible for you to feel that
Then I'll tell you what your father said to me
Which I then had translated by the nice man
At the newspaper stand

He said that your father said feeling young is--

Waking up to bacon
That somebody else is making

I told you he was a poet

Find someone like that, Dylan
And then spend the rest of your life
Tucked inside them
Like money in an envelope

Even if it means you leave everything else behind

Don't ever let anybody judge you
For doing what you had to do
To stay alive

Ohhh, your sister is having quite a party right about now...

I suppose she's angry
I couldn't find any root beer
To pour over those pickles

That means time for a walk around the apartment
All eight square feet of it

I love you

I'm sorry I couldn't get that time machine to work

Love,
Mom

. . . . .

Dear Dylan,

Your grandmother called me

She said you weren't at your graduation

She said you left her a voicemail
Saying you needed to see the world
More than you needed to see your diploma

She was quite angry

Especially after I said--

'What do you know? I guess he is my son, after all.'

Love,
Mom