Dear Benefactor…

In June 2007, I was scheduled to graduate in an old-fashioned ceremony that involved caps and gowns, a long speech by a journalist who’d been blown up in Iraq and was just getting his life back on track, and patient relatives sitting baking in 100° F California sun. I’d finished my master’s project, an 8,000-word chapter about NGO workers in Nicaragua (one of those projects you can pursue in graduate school before the icky realities of the marketplace dictate how you spend your time), and I was spending the last few days crying and trying to get out of my lease early. I rounded up a few family members to come to the ceremony—my mum, and my grandfather were coming—and then got an email from S. wondering if he could come.
I said no. “If you come, I will be so focused on you being there that I won’t be able to pay attention to my family,” I wrote. He responded gracefully: “I assure you I completely understand, and thank you for being honest. Might my consolation be to have you describe the occasion to me in your usual colourful manner?”

I regretted my decision and couldn’t sleep for days afterward. I couldn’t imagine how awkward it would be and how I would navigate it: how would I introduce him to my friends? How would I explain him to my grandfather, who was travelling nine hours to see me graduate? Who would he talk to? But I should have found a way to make it work.

It wasn’t until more than a year later that I was able to apologize to him in person, when I met him for the first time, one lovely fall day in 2008. I was in Montreal to see friends and I set up a lunch with S. at a French restaurant in Mile End. I didn’t sleep the night before. Would he be disappointed? Would I measure up to my letters? I arrived at the restaurant after nearly hyperventilating in the cab on the way there. S. was a short, pink-faced man in a striped suit with a tiny, brightly coloured sports car. He was polite in an Old World way, choosing wine for us and telling me what I should order. We talked about the financial meltdown in the States, the Canadian election. I thanked him half a dozen times, and apologized for the graduation fiasco. He told me he understood, and left it at that. The lunch was im–personal in a way that made me think he’d either barely read, or forgotten, all my letters. I was slightly disappointed to realize that he didn’t know me, and I certainly didn’t know him. We ate salmon and green salad, and a perfect lemon tart. Over coffee, I asked him why he’d done what he did for me. His answer was simple: I liked your letter. He didn’t seem disappointed that I hadn’t landed a fancy, well-paid job right out of grad school. “Life rarely works out that way,” he said.

“You’ll figure things out,” he said kindly, and then added, “I’m just glad I could help.”