by Shania Twain
Fortunately, the dedicated people around me kept up my morale. Although I stood alone in the spotlight, I always felt the support from everyone else onstage and backstage. The fans were forgiving, which also gave me strength. Ultimately I felt that despite my vocal challenges, we were still entertaining the audiences every night. And if they were happy, I was happy. Not much else you can do when you have twenty thousand or so people waiting to see you. But at this point I was no longer feeling like I was the woman who could “do it all.”
I was still blessed with the realization of what an awesome spectacle it was for me to watch the enthusiastic crowds streaming into the arena from every direction, every night. Unbeknown to them, I’d be sitting behind the dark tinted glass windows of the tour bus parked just outside the loading dock, taking in the celebratory scene: the “Shania We Love You” banners, the faces painted with my name, the T-shirts emblazoned with the tour logo and itinerary. The fans were beautiful, and it moved me to hear them chanting my songs as they skipped excitedly toward the entrances. I hoped that I would be able to please them and make it worth their while. I wanted to open the window and call out to them—wish them a fun time and apologize in advance for not feeling up to par. Sometimes fans would make eye contact with me through the pane without their realizing it, which was … surreal. It was like they were looking right through me, as if I were a ghost.
I remember standing backstage with Eja one night, watching the arena fill up. Usually by showtime, I’d be on the bus giving him his bath and getting him ready for bed. Then I’d get myself ready and head back just in time to hit the stage. My two-and-a-half-year-old had been reading a book about ants earlier in the day, and I guess they were still fresh in his mind, because Eja turned to me and observed, “Mommy, they look like ants. You’re the queen, and they’re all here for you.” It’s amazing how children can be perceptive beyond their years. That he understood my role as the one they were all coming to see. The people all the way across the venue did resemble ants from that distance, and they were all there to see me. So I could understand his child logic and how he made the connection.
However, I’ve never wanted Eja to get confused by the image of celebrity and develop a false impression that I was in any way superior to anyone, so I reminded him that I wasn’t a queen. “In fact,” I said, “I work for those people. They don’t work for me, the way that army ants do for their queen. They’re here to be entertained by me, and I have to get out there and make them happy.”
It was showtime. I left him with his little thoughts of his queen mommy and walked toward the stage.
27
Give Me a Break
Our final show in Fort Lauderdale, on July 10, 2004, closed the curtain not only on the Up! tour but on nearly twelve years of relentlessly striving for success and then sustaining it.
I felt as if something immense had been accomplished, but I was exhausted, too—physically, mentally, emotionally. For all the record sales, awards, and accolades of the past decade, my confidence was rattled and my self-esteem low. I realized that the things that brought me the deepest satisfaction were not necessarily related to my professional accomplishments at all. The timing was good in regard to devoting myself to being a mom and housewife for a while. I was enjoying the change of pace at the château in Switzerland.
As it would turn out, my timing could not have been better career-wise, as well, because the record industry was, to be blunt, undergoing a seismic shift. There are a number of reasons for this, including the lost revenue from fans downloading songs for free on the Internet, an array of entertainment choices besides music, and a lack of foresight on the part of record companies to have adjusted to the new landscape.
Nothing more beautiful has come out of any effort I’ve ever made than my baby boy. It was time for me to enjoy this reward in my life, take a break from my career, and allow my personal life to dominate my time and energy. It was time to take pride in things like keeping a clean house, parenting a happy child, and being a wife and homemaker.
Reflecting on my past, I can see now that having grown up amid some harsh circumstances caused me to develop a hard shell, something I’ve had to work at overcoming ever since. Not much came easy when I was a kid, and so I felt that I had to fight my way up throughout my youth. The struggle continued into adulthood, perhaps because of the highly competitive profession I chose, except that as a grown-up, you’re expected to be more diplomatic and patient, less openly opinionated and controlling. It took me a while to realize that even though I still had to battle to get where I wanted to go, all in all, life was gentler, less complicated emotionally, and more civilized than when I was a child. I was surrounded by a lot of wonderful people who rewarded me with loyalty, appreciation, and kindness, and I had more opportunities to stop, think, and communicate. Most things that I do in my life I do because I enjoy the process, not because I think there is going to be a payoff at the end. The reward is in the experience itself.
Cooking is a good example of this for me because I love to create in the kitchen. Anyone who enjoys cooking knows that the ultimate reward is the pleasure your food brings to those eating it. What I like most about cooking is that, as with music, you can improvise. Sometimes, in fact, that’s how you develop your best recipes. Sure, I could follow a cookbook recipe to the letter, but then I’m just reproducing someone else’s creation. I’ve found that it’s usually more fulfilling—in all aspects of life, not just in the kitchen—to take whatever I’ve learned and adapt it to my own personality, experience, and skills. Of course, in doing so, you risk failing and winding up with a dish that sends everyone running from the table. However, life has taught me that it’s worth taking the chance.
When not bent over my Aga range, I spent my time with Eja. He was starting preschool, and I enjoyed pushing him to and from school in his stroller every day. It was forty minutes each way, which helped keep me in shape. You’d be amazed at how many calories you burn onstage, and without that physical outlet, I missed the exercise. I was sad when my little boy outgrew the stroller, for both sentimental and practical reasons.
As much as Mutt and I both loved the château and its gardens, I missed Canada. I don’t mean the cold, but sitting around a campfire on a lakefront somewhere where I could reach out and touch the water, not just look over it from a mansion on a hill. I wanted to be right amid the nature on the shore. In 2007, we decided to move into a small bungalow right on the edge of magnificent Lake Geneva. Given the benefit of hindsight, I think that the move was somewhat symbolic of other changes to come soon in my personal life. I felt torn about leaving the château, as I’d gone through my pregnancy there and had fond memories of helping Mutt plant the garden during my last trimester. Eja spent his early years eating rose petals and munching happily on freshly grown basil and sage there.
Tim was buried in the garden, too, which made leaving even harder. He had died at the age of ten, which is about the average for a German shepherd. Entering the last weeks of the Up! tour, we sent him home to Switzerland because the cities we were playing were too spread out, and he was too old to be put through such long flights. Just a week after I got back, Eja had to go into the hospital to have his tonsils removed. When I put the overnight bag in the back of the car, Tim started to panic, thinking, of course, that I was going away again. As I pulled out, he trotted alongside the car, frantic that he wasn’t coming. It broke my heart, but I knew we’d be away only overnight.
No sooner had my son been administered anesthesia than our caretaker called to say that Tim had suffered a heart attack and was at the vet. He’d call me back with an update. I held Eja’s hand, knowing in my heart that the news about Tim wouldn’t be good, and it wasn’t: my beloved Schutzhund had died. I felt so sad and so guilty, too, as I really believe that Tim died of a broken heart, thinking that I was leaving him behind.
• • •
Just as we were about to refurbish the bungalow, the villa that I currently live in popped
up. It was the better property, with a boathouse and much more room, so we abandoned the bungalow. I turned my attention to the much larger renovation that our new home would require. At the same time, I was not only planning to overhaul a Swiss farm that we’d purchased but also in the final stages of constructing a huge complex on a farm in New Zealand that we bought in 2004.
The New Zealand property was on the Motutapu, a high-country sheep-farming station on the south island. I started designing a homestead for us shortly after we bought it and began putting my heart, soul, and dreams into the plans. I dreamed of riding horses across the vast plains, along winding riverbanks and through golden tussocks in the sharp, beaming sunshine of the land of the Kiwi. Every year Mutt, Eja, and I would go there for several months, living in a small caravan (at least, that’s what it’s called there; another word would be trailer) parked in one of the sheep paddocks. It was pretty cramped for the three of us, but we enjoyed camping out while our home was being built.
Essentially, renovating properties became my full-time job, and I relished the challenge. Piles of architectural and engineering plans, interior design catalogs, and magazines cluttered the kitchen table in the bungalow in Switzerland, as we were living in the basement while the house itself was under renovations, so there was no office or desk space. There were stacks of email correspondence from architects, engineers, contractors, and decorators. My time, energy, and love went into building these nests for my family.
During the several months we lived in the bungalow, Marie-Anne and I took up tennis lessons, as Eja and her daughter, Johanna, had been taking them together for a couple of years already. We figured we’d give it a try to get more exercise in, since the kids were now both six years old and well out of their strollers, and we were walking less. Between regular long walks and tennis, Marie-Anne and I were doing pretty well with our attempts to stay fit, and the long walking allowed us to talk and share as friends without men or kids around. It was good girl bonding time.
Marie-Anne could be hot and cold at times, but after nine years of friendship, I shrugged it off as just the way she was. In the months leading up to our annual trip to New Zealand, however, our conversations became more personal than ever, like we’d suddenly broken through some barrier. I confided to her that Mutt had grown distant, to the point where I felt our marriage was in trouble. Marie-Anne always listened attentively and offered sensible, objective advice. After all, although she was my friend, she’d known my husband longer than she’d known me. For the first year that we had the château, I was still on the Come On Over tour while she was already working for Mutt in Switzerland.
Sharing my secret concerns with her made me feel better. It was highly unusual for me to talk with anyone about my personal life, especially my marriage. I was incredibly tight lipped in that regard with everyone in my life. But I was making a real exception opening up the way I did with Marie-Anne, and for some reason, she went so out of her way like she never had before to make me comfortable with that. Interestingly enough, Marie-Anne let on that she and her husband, Fred, were trying to work through marital problems of their own; maybe I took comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone, and the fact that she was the only longtime friend I had who was close enough to talk with in person.
In the fall of 2007, however, Marie-Anne started canceling tennis and turning down walks. I was getting quite enthusiastic about tennis and wanted to play more, not less, so I started playing and taking lessons with another mother of one of the kids in Johanna and Eja’s tennis class. Sandra and I enjoyed our tennis together, and I was appreciative of her company. I was developing a new friendship locally, and it felt good, as my social life had always been so closed. Sandra and I shared similar views on life and had many stimulating conversations about much more than men and kids, having more intellectual things to talk about, and I was motivated by this companionship. I didn’t understand Marie-Anne’s sudden distance, but we would leave Switzerland very soon for the Christmas holidays and then head on to New Zealand to finally see the building project through to the finish, so I figured we’d just pick up where we left off and things would be back to normal when we got back four months later. The Motutapu farm in New Zealand was my dream house; my wish list of every possible detail had been fulfilled in the design and architecture. This had been an enormous project spanning four years of work. I was beyond excited to see 2008 approaching and this dream finally becoming a reality.
Our plan was to spend Christmas in Canada with my family, hit Utah for ten days of skiing, then begin the New Year in our new, second home just outside of Wanaka, New Zealand. Nevertheless, I was unusually sad to leave Switzerland and our friends there, especially Marie-Anne, Fred, and Johanna. We missed them whenever we traveled, and our New Zealand trips were usually spent in three- to four-month stretches. Something else was tugging at me this particular time, though, but I couldn’t explain it then.
During this stretch in New Zealand, Mutt returned to Switzerland twice, while Eja and I stayed behind. He was going to prepare for some upcoming music projects, and I needed to oversee the finishing touches on the house. It was a lot of work to bear alone, and I was overwhelmed and not happy that he had to go.
Tension between us had started building slowly in the previous couple of years, but it was quite noticeable in the recent weeks since we left Switzerland before Christmas. Communication was just breaking down more and more, to the point where I felt he was avoiding me altogether. I’ve practiced meditation regularly for the past seventeen years as a method of reconnecting with myself in a peaceful place, a place within, where I practice the discipline of not thinking, let alone overthinking. For me, meditation is an exercise in stilling the mind, but at that time I was constantly thinking about the strain in my marriage, and it was consuming an overwhelming amount of my thoughts, sending my mind spinning during meditation instead of quieting it. At that time I needed meditation for more than just disciplinary reasons; I needed it to escape my anguish over the deteriorating state of my relationship with the man I loved and didn’t want to lose, yet felt slipping away. Now I was depending on meditation for answers on how to keep him. I consider it fruitful meditation when I achieve thoughtless concentration, but now my meditation had become a place I went to loaded with questions and expectations.
In order to preserve it as the spiritual retreat it was meant to be, it was time to turn to a more intellectual therapy as another method of guidance for the worldly, marital problems I was having. I’d ordered a tall stack of books on how to save a marriage and how to be a better spouse, friend, and person overall. In order to tackle the discontent in my life, it was my responsibility to learn how in the hell I could get to a place where I might find some sort of peace that would allow me to accept my unhappy marriage for what it was and not be one of those people always thinking the grass is greener on the other side. I wanted to learn to appreciate what I had and make the most of it, to take a realistic and practical approach. This was my intent, and my books were going to educate me on how to do this.
Among my pile of self-help books were:
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan
The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra
The Rules of Life by Richard Templar
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston, MD
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
I wanted to save my marriage and work on it, but I could sense that something was almost too seriously wrong between us now, as our communication had dwindled to strained conversation and little to no eye contact. A panic began to well up inside me, and I became anxious and afraid. I sensed there was something he wasn’t telling me.
At least if we were in Switzerland, I could have called Marie-Anne to
go for one of our lengthy walks-slash-marital-therapy-sessions. Instead, I was way up in New Zealand’s high country, while my friend was at the base of the Swiss Alps.
One night, a few days after he left for Switzerland, I was in such despair that I just had to talk to someone, so I called Marie-Anne at home while Eja was asleep. My husband’s silence was causing me to imagine all sorts of terrible things, I told her.
“Maybe he’s ill and doesn’t want to upset me,” I worried aloud. “If you see Mutt while he’s in Switzerland, could you just see if you notice anything … strange about him? Like, if you think he looks sick in any way or is acting out of character.” As she was our local assistant in Switzerland, it was logical to assume Mutt would contact her while he was there to help with any administrative tasks or run errands. She assured me that she would keep an eye out and for me not to worry, commenting on how I had enough to worry about with the workload of tying up all the loose ends with the building, alone. She was very sympathetic and comforting.
Then I blurted out my other fear.
“Do you think he’s having an affair?” I asked.
Marie-Anne’s reply didn’t surprise me because I sheepishly agreed with her response—that it was absurd to even think my husband could possibly be having an affair.
The almost scolding tone of her voice in response made me feel foolish for even having entertained such a notion. After all, how could he possibly carry on an affair without my noticing, since we lived such an isolated life, especially in the last few years living in Switzerland?
Caution: when someone within your circle is having an affair, it can be very hard for anyone to see, and easily masked by excuses that are easy to legitimize, especially if it’s a neighbor, mutual friend, or the notoriously obvious and predictable secretary.