How Bob Dylan and Timothée Chalamet Helped Heal a Rift with My Son

Patching a deep estrangement can be best as a long game

A Bob Dylan mural in downtown Minneapolis; photo by Elaine Masters

Kintsugi – “A 500-year-old Japanese tradition that highlights imperfections rather than hiding them. This...teaches calm when a cherished piece of pottery breaks; it's a reminder of the beauty of human fragility as well.” BBC Travel

The Boy

The door clicks shut as my son leaves to live full-time with his dad. It’s like cutting the umbilical cord again but I’m not prepared to be an empty nester. He’s barely a teenager.

Putting his old electronics in the garage, I smile remembering how he put his first, short film together—writing, casting, shooting, editing, and staying up way past his bedtime, to push his first movie out into the world. He’s ten years old. Fate favors this pursuit, which comes simultaneously with everything that growing up puts him through—navigating his parents’ divorce, schoolwork, and first love, first heartbreak too.

I put a scrapbook of birth pictures in a drawer. Glancing at the images, I’m back in the bathtub where he was born. Spontaneously. My only child. I’m 41 and almost lose him once when he chokes in the bassinet and later when family disagreements threaten to take him away. PTSD haunts me. I flee if someone looks askew when I’m with the baby in public. I burst into tears and change the channel if an infant cries on TV. Dedicating myself to his survival, I create a comfortable home time and again as my husband’s work moves us from one California coastal town to the next. It’s part of our agreement to go with the money job. My acting gigs and voice-over work hardly pay the water bill.

When I realize my ten-year-old son is going on dates with his dad and “lady friends,” I end the gaslighting. This isn’t what I want my boy to think marriage is. I cobble together an escape. By the time he’s twelve, I agree to shared custody.

I’m determined to give him the only stability I can—a home in my little condo. He swings from his father’s house and new wife to my place every few weeks. He begins to thrive in classes. I sit beside him on the call that convinces USC to place him in film school. On the afternoon I find him emptying his closet, there’s no warning. Eventually, I find surrogates to admire—young men going through some of the same struggles my boy might be. They soften the blow.

The Band

A performance stuns me on late-night TV. I’m delighted as Half Alive slides and dances through their breakthrough hit, “Still Feel.” I start to watch replays, pushing my phone screen with their videos into friendly faces and cajoling others to join me at concerts. I track each release as they lumber toward success. One song, “Creature,” holds a certain tone, and I tear up every time I hear it. Within a few years of struggles, the band fades. New songs never reach the same pinnacles but may one day. The lead singer has my son's name. I deny that’s my connection, claiming they’re just fun to dance to.

The Actor

I’ve always found solace in dark movie theaters, escaping as bright screens open up new worlds. Call Me by Your Name chronicles a young man's journey through first love and my reaction surprises me. The angst of the parents, the emotional struggles, and sexual abandon all pull me back to an earlier time, my first crush— and my son’s.

I watch my teenage son circle his arm around his first girlfriend’s waist as I open the front door and immediately understand. I want to spare them the awkwardness of finding places to be intimate and offer my upstairs guest room, mentioning to my boy privately that he needs to treat her well. He does but within a few months, she leaves for college in another state.

In the movie’s final scene, the camera holds still, recording the anguished face of a young Timothée Chalamet. He stares into a living room fire, shaking in pain. His character has just learned that his beloved will never return. I watch in the shadows, quietly sobbing through those final minutes. It cuts so close.

There begins a new fandom, tracking Chalamet's remarkable career as he leaves teen roles behind and the man in him emerges. His loping frame and the wisp of a mustache remind me of seeing my boy with facial hair for the first time. They are the same age, but I don’t make much of the connection.

The Artist

When Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, he stays silent for five days before publishing a statement. He tells a trusted journalist that getting the award is "Amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?" Then he waits a year before claiming the prize. That seems odd until I run into the young Dylan's past on a Minnesota road trip.

My mom used to joke, “Bob Dylan went to my high school.” When I visit Hibbing, their shared hometown, she proudly shows me where they both walked the same halls, although decades apart. With a bit of genealogical sleuthing, I find Minnesota cousins I've never met. They’re much younger than my mom and shared high school classes with Bobbie Zimmerman. “He was weird,” one comments over lunch. Turns out others there thought so too. When his band opened a high school concert, the principal closed the curtains on them. But Dylan was already enamored with the folk music he tracked on late-night radio and took that love with him as he moved to Minneapolis, adopted a new name, and courted creative mentors.

Arriving practically penniless in New York City, he flops on couches in friends’ apartments and discovers great literature on living room bookcases. They’re scattered collections. He picks up Melville, Kafka, and other great writers on a whim, opening a book and reading until he loses interest. In those hungry days, he doesn’t forget a word.

In a used bookstore near Lake Superior, I find a copy of his memoir, The Chronicles. The flow of words is unlike anything I've read before. Compelled to make sense of it, my interest grows as I turn each page, and I realize the flow mimics his performance style. I'd never been a big fan but avidly read about his creative drive as a wordsmith, the impulsive performer always reaching for connection, striving toward a storyline, and mesmerizing listeners.

As I learn more, the sensitive young man he once was strikes a chord. Watching a documentary about Dylan's rise to worldly status, I glimpse how much success demands. Clinging fans and idiotic interviewers, sycophants, and would-be lovers clamor for his attention. The Minnesota boy rides through waves of concert tours, strives to give audiences what they want, and, daring to change, goes electric. Complaining and booing, their reactions mystify him. “I want to go home,” he repeats to a promoter in one scene of Martin Scorsese’s early documentary, then Dylan bolts. I think about his mother. Hers wasn’t the home he ran to.

Kintsugi

The Japanese kintsugi technique reveals new beauty in fragile objects, but first, there must be a break. The mending takes a long while as each shard is set into place, revealing a new whole with the final piece. Similarly, it took years to heal my heart, create a new life, find a wonderful partner, and flourish.

My son is now almost thirty. I call him occasionally, tentatively navigating our silences, and try not to pummel him with all the questions I long to ask. We’re building something as conversations dig deeper.

Somehow, I stay calm during a call when he painfully shoots out: “Why did you have roommates, those weird roommates?”

I remember those difficult months when child support was challenged and attorney fees sapped my savings, but now I couldn’t criticize his father directly, or I’d risk losing my boy once again. Slowly, taking a breath, I objectively explain the circumstances and make sure that none of the women—girls, really—had hurt him.

He reveals a different wound. When the roommates materialized, my little condo no longer felt like home. I thought he had all he could need—his own room, homecooked meals, camera accessories, new clothes—while I slept on the downstairs couch. Who knows where the idea comes from, but at the time, he says that his father’s big house is more comfortable and his new, Swiss wife is nice.

Years pass and he returns to California after working across the country. Sometimes, I make excuses to visit Los Angeles from my San Diego home and let him know when I’ll be in town. I ask, 'Why don't we meet for lunch or dinner?" I drop a link into infrequent text messages, to something he might find interesting. I let him know that the house I now own is his also, anytime. He's a wonder, a successful creative, plotting dots and grids while building digital worlds for scientists and studios, but still unsatisfied. Somehow, I’m grateful for letting go and drawing back. Now there’s gold in the cracks.

“The time’s a changing,” echoes the Dylan anthem, but it’s also a lyric in Half Alive’s latest release, and a new movie, A Complete Unknown, about Bob Dylan's early days is opening soon. I spot a picture of the lead actor doing research in Hibbing.

He’s draped across seats inside my mom’s high school auditorium. Timothée Chalamet is playing the young Dylan. My son and I are talking about seeing the movie together. I don’t imagine tearing up during the film but if he asks, I would be hard-pressed to explain why an indie band opened my heart, an actor forced it to feel again, and a poet minstrel can pluck the strings.

Elaine Masters is an essayist, travel, and food journalist with awards from Travelers’ Tales, Edible Magazine, Indie Excellence, Society of Professional Journalists, and American Women in Radio and TV. Her blog, Tripwellgal.com, focuses on humane, ethical journeys, and ocean adventures. While working on her memoir about travel serendipity, Elaine continues multi-media storytelling in @tripwellgal reels.