My first morning in Paris. It was seven o’clock on a Sunday in March and it was raining. I walked from my hotel in the Latin Quarter across the river to the right bank. Everyone had always told me that I had to go to the Marais. I stopped in front of a window at semi-open bakery, the shopkeeper just unlocking the door for the day. Dozens of tinted macaroons lined the bakery window shelves, and the rain, falling down in heavy sheets across the glass, made me think of one of Monet’s watercolor canvases. The pigments of the tiny cookies blended wonderfully with one another, creating a street side masterpiece.
I had dreamed of this moment since I was three and wished my mother could’ve been standing next to me on the Rue des Rosiers. Even if it was cold and I was completely soaked. From my mother was born my love for two things French: pastries and Impressionist artists. I knew about Cezanne, Renoir and Gauguin long before I had ever heard the names Cinderella or Snow White. Since my mother is an artist, I spent my whole life I surrounded by paints and brushes, calligraphy ink and imported paper that smelled of faraway places.
She and I used to sit on a bench in front of her store in downtown La Jolla and share a croissant—I loved the soft, light-as-air middle, and she always ate my leftovers, the crusts. Those days in my memory are always sunny, the Pacific Ocean made of billions of shimmering sapphires dancing along the horizon in the distance, and my mother, perfectly frozen at 35, always wearing her favorite Florentine printed sundress. “One day Miss Kate,” she would say “we will be doing this in Paris.”
My mother had dreams of traveling the world, but the farthest she ever got was Morelia, Mexico, where she lived for a year as an art student when she was 20. After returning she met a man who she thought she could travel and spend her life with and married him. Seven years later she had two children, a beautiful home in South Pasadena (she still hadn’t left California) and an absent husband. After filing for divorce she found a job as a graphic designer and moved on, taking her two boys with her. She was a single mother for six years before she met my father on a bench along Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach.
Within four years both my brother and I were born. At the time my father was a writer, which allowed him to stay at home with my brother and me, but it didn’t allow for a very steady income. So my mom opened a snobby stationary store in downtown La Jolla and kept working. My mom closed her store when my oldest brother was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I was almost four and even I could see how it changed everything. I remember walking into the hospital room where Jacob was resting before his surgery. My mother stood by his tiny bed; she looked so tall and strong that day. I was so proud that she was my mother. The best gift I ever received was for my fourth birthday on February 14, 1995 when Jacob came home from the hospital. I don’t remember ever seeing my mother happier than that night.
After the store closed, my dad started working, and our family became quite mobile. In every new city we moved to my mom and I would find a new bakery in the area to frequent, which had to fill one criterion—it must make croissants. There was Belen Artesian Bakers in Escondido, Four Sisters in Wailuku, Le Petit in Baltimore, The Secret Garden in the San Fernando Valley. It was our thing, something about her that I never had to share with my brothers.
But the older I got, the less enjoyable it became. Our sleepy afternoons in the garden with tea turned into slamming doors and fights; she and my father screaming at each other. The kinds of things that happen to married people when they’ve been together for a while, the things that make being at home uncomfortable and awkward. I could tell that they just stopped loving each other. I remember how I used to lock myself in my room for hours, but my bedroom door was just never quite thick enough to drown out the yelling. I used to stare at the maps pinned on my walls, the ones my mother so carefully hung, imagining myself somewhere else really far away. I blamed my mother for all of it: for being too needy, for spending too much money, for making my father so mad.
When I told my mother that I was moving to Europe, she was so happy. She kept hugging me and kissing me and saying, “I’m so proud of you Miss Kate, you’ve become so much better than I could’ve ever imagined.” Later that night I walked by her bedroom. My dad was out of town on business, Dubai I believe. I could hear her sobs through the door.
It was difficult to leave but I convinced myself that it was my life, the point where I had to let my parents be my parents, let them work it out and that they had to let me move on without them. My mom helped me pack all of my things, photos of my brothers and our home in Maui. When she wasn’t looking I snuck a picture of my parents in my bag, the only one I ever had of them. They’re at a dinner party; the shimmering lights in the background make me think that it must’ve been Christmas. My father is looking into the camera, trying to hold back a smile, but failing. And my mother, so in love, is kissing him on the cheek. When I landed at London Heathrow airport, I took that picture out of my suitcase, folded it three times and stuck it in my wallet.
When I found myself finally standing in the Marais, finally in Paris, finally staring at actual perfect French pastries, I took out that photo of my parents and thought of what I had left to get to this moment. This was the dream that my mother had given me.