Earlier on, even before I had my record deal, I discovered that steam therapy helped to open my throat. My vocal performance relies on a clear strong voice, without any snags, and I write songs that challenge my range and require a lot of stamina on the road; when I’m singing alone at the piano, I have nowhere to hide if my voice isn’t on. One of my tricks for protecting my voice has been to immediately turn on the hot water in the shower after checking into my hotel room. I stand in the bathroom as it steams up, drinking hot tea or room temperature water and breathing the warm moisture into my airplane-or road-affected lungs and throat. The relief is always instant and the sense of calm, intoxicating.
But now things have gotten out of control—to the point that I’ve become addicted. Steam is like a drug. I have to have it before I can walk out on to the stage. I have my road manager call ahead to each city to find a steam room, which by the way, is not easy to find—she can always find a sauna, but I have no use for dry heat.
“God Made Me” was the first single released in America, and the record company has had me visit all the major cities to promote the song. I have been on the road for two weeks before I get to New York where Sony has organized a private performance for the radio programmers along with MTV and VH1. I have put incredible pressure on myself this night, knowing that I cannot afford to hit a snag. The stage is set in a stark, cold conference room, though candles are lit and a big vase of tropical flowers is on the piano. The table and chairs have been moved out of the room, so everyone has to stand. And they seem to be closing in on me.
While I’m singing “Surrounded” I see the guy from MTV lean over and whisper something to the head of Columbia Records. Right then I am convinced that my career is over, done, finished. In one second, one snag, one snap of the finger, I have lost my dream. I stumble through the meet-and-greet afterwards. My tongue is burning and I’m nauseous; I want desperately to go home, not home to the hotel, to my real home. But I can’t—I’ve been gone for so long I don’t know where my real home is. I barely shut the door to my hotel room before I crank the shower. It stays on all night.
My manager comes down to my room the next morning to check on me. When she walks in I can’t see her, I can’t see three inches in front of my face. The walls are actually sweating. I lie there in bed, with her sitting by my side, trying to convince myself that everything’s normal. I am so scared that I have to cling to that possibility for dear life.
• • •
I am so far away from that hotel now, so far from all those fears and insecurities. Having recorded two subsequent albums since Under These Rocks and Stones, and now, while I am working on my fourth album and writing and producing for other artists and performers, I don’t put so much pressure on myself at all. There is so much more to me now—with a husband and two children, my life is much fuller, and I feel defined by a range of new elements.
While the insecurities that haunted me have never gone away completely, they have lessened and a value on relationships has become strong—not only personal ones with my family and friends, but also with the global community. I attribute this sense of security to the very things that have hurt and humiliated me the most. I actually hold tight to my humility as though it’s my greatest asset.
My relationship with my mother has always been bedrock for me. During the early years of my career, whenever I was teetering on the edge of some emotional precipice, she kept me from going over. I love her dearly, and not just because she’s my mother. The thing about her that makes me feel continually humbled and awestruck is that she can laugh at herself. I don’t just mean giggle, I mean laugh-till-you-split-your-sides laugh. She let me know that it’s OK to recognize the humour in an embarrassing situation. If it weren’t for my mother, I don’t think I’d be able to reveal many of the things that made me anxious in the past. She has shown me that humour is potentially the very key to a stable and happy existence, that perspective is so important …
An image passed through my mind once when I was sitting on a plane from Los Angeles to Toronto. I could suddenly see the world from a distant perspective—off in space above me somewhere. If I had to give it a shape I’d say it resembled an undiscovered continent, a golf ball or a face without a feature. Somehow, this image of the world has also helped me to place less importance on those things that are out of my control. I don’t know where the image came from, or why it chose me, but I take it with me everywhere I go—onto the stage, to a writing session, performing in front of an audience of thousands, even into the maternity ward. When I imagine the world as the size of a golf ball spinning and floating in the universe, it’s hard for me to get stressed out. This image also reflects my view that each life matters. As in the story of The Little Prince I see each individual as being on a unique trip around the universe and having a right to chart it in a way unlike any other.
A few months ago I had the television on, blending into the other home-like sounds of a typical evening: a plane flying overhead, the heater humming, the occasional car passing by, a coyote howling in the canyon. At this point I had seen days of coverage of the tsunami disaster and endless reports of the carnage of the Iraq war. I had also been constantly checking the latest updates on the Sudanese civil war and famine, which were high on our radar, as my husband had just returned from Darfur, where there are many displaced refugees. I glanced at the television and was struck by the image of a young Middle Eastern boy lying in a hospital bed. The whole world, including the noises, all the global tragedy depicted in the media seemed to evaporate as I turned the volume up on the television.
This thirteen-year-old boy, along with twelve others, had been caught in the crossfire of the constant fighting and escalations in the Gaza Strip. Six of those boys perished. He and the other six other boys were now amputees, and suffering in the hospital. The focus of this story was on the boy’s daily routine since he’d been caught in that round of artillery. His parents were at his bedside as the dressing was changed on what were then stumps just above where his knees once were. They held him down to help with the procedure as well as to comfort him as he screamed a scream that was like nothing I had ever heard in my life.
This was a new kind of horror and fear that I had not seen before on television. I don’t remember what the next commercial was trying to sell me. I was crying in my bed for what seemed to be hours. Just when I would start to calm down, the pain would return. I don’t know if I felt the pain of the boy being tortured in the bed, of the mother sitting at his side helpless, or of the father who, after holding and kissing the boy, changed the expression on his face and told the journalist that he simply wished his son had been killed; then he would not have to watch him die every day.
Even with all of the exposure to the hardships of the world that I have at my fingertips, the Palestinian boy that night brought home to me the clear realization that this place is also his world, his chance and his right. His story renewed and reinforced my deep conviction that every person should feel at home and safe in this world—and that I wanted to work toward that goal.
My career gives me so many opportunities to contribute. Whether I am doing a public service announcement for the Canadian Mental Health Association, or going to Iraq to work on a public-appeal documentary dealing with the effects of sanctioning civilians, I feel a distinct calling to ensure human rights. This calling sometimes seems to even overshadow my connection to music.
My career has ultimately led me to a place of rich opportunities. While I love to sing, perform, write music and be a viable part of the world of entertainment, I’m most fulfilled when I’m learning about and witnessing all of the individual stories—the suffering, the strength shown in adversity, and the hope and spirit that humanity has to offer. After all of the negotiating, business and competition I have seen in my profession, I realize that it was that feeling of giving that led me down this road in the first place. I truly believe that wanting to please others, even if it begins in a selfish place of wanting t
o be accepted, can lead to the most fulfilling existence possible. I have been passionate about music since I was a little girl because I saw the positive effect it had on people when I was playing or singing. The feeling of having an impact on others’ lives became a core part of my being.
As I have grown older, my desire to bring peace and happiness to others has widened. I know that I am doing the right thing—that I am answering my call, because the more I give, the more the opportunities to give open up for me. A phenomenal snowball effect occurs as soon as we start doing the right thing! I was certainly not always on the right path in my life, but I now see that all the detours and bumps along the way prepared me for the road that I was meant to travel. I am now grateful for every bruise, every scar, every rock on the road I’ve travelled—and for every story I have to tell.
This is a rare occasion. I am out for after-work cocktails and crudités with “the girls,” my three best childhood friends, now adults. We are all busy, and it is hard for us to find time for ourselves, let alone one another. But we try, and once a year we actually pull it off. So here we are, sipping drinks, snacking on nachos and playing catch-up—a game I have come to dread.
Looking around the table, I am suitably impressed. We’ve come a long way in the twenty-five years since we first met, fresh-faced and full of ambition, in junior kindergarten. We all have university degrees under our belts. And we have all established ourselves as working women. Michelle is a lawyer with her own practice. Nora is a charge nurse in the critical care unit at Sick Kids. Susie is a senior marketing director at Pepsico. And me?
I am a mother.
Why does my job always sound like a bad act on The Gong Show? Motherhood is a noble, time-honoured profession, but in this you-go-girl crowd, maternal devotion flies about as well as a lead zeppelin.
I brace myself for the inevitable, excruciating moment when the conversation will get around to me; the moment when my friends will suddenly exhaust their current inventory of workplace heroics and histrionics and one will turn to me and ask, “So what have you been doing lately?”
This is the familiar version of the equally paralytic dinner party query: “And what do you do for a living?”
Both evoke the deer-in-the-headlights response. I freeze. My jaw drops open, and my mind works like a feverish terrier in a flowerbed, digging around in the dirt for something more interesting than a bone to offer up for inspection.
To my girlfriends in the bar, I make no overt apologies; a deflective “not much” is sufficient. But to complete strangers, I feel compelled to elaborate.
“I am a mother.”
“Oh.” (Think, Hindenburg.)
“And-I-write-books-on-the-side.”
“Ahhh?”
I kick myself under the table every time I say it. Why do I need to justify my existence by being something other than a devoted mom?
There is an inherent criticism in that little disappointed word, that “Oh,” like a tire going flat. People expect much more of modern, intelligent, educated women. We have our rights, and we are counted on to exercise them. It is not acceptable for a young woman with a university degree to linger barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Armed with the hard-won freedom to do anything she chooses, it is regarded as high treason for her to sign up for a twenty-year tour of duty on the domestic front where the work is thankless and there is no weekly paycheque, no sick leave, no holidays, no possibility for promotion and no pension.
Being an author with an income as-well-as-a-mother restores my credibility, re-establishes my value as a human being and earns me entry into the officers’ mess. So I drop it like a small bomb and when it explodes, I am the only one who suffers any injury.
At times like these, when I fumble around making excuses for being what I am and doing what I do, I find myself wrestling little devils of self-doubt. Much as I try to deny it, there is a small, stubborn part of me that feels, not unfulfilled, but slightly underdeveloped—as if, in photographs I might not appear as distinctly as other women.
Was I meant to leave a more profound impression? In declining the opportunity to establish a career outside the home have I inadvertently undermined the feminist cause?
We have been conditioned to believe that our mothers and our grandmothers were trapped by their domesticity; that they were disenfranchised, oppressed; that they were prevented from exercising choice and therefore relegated to small, sad, prescriptive lives.
Today’s mother is not chained to the kitchen table. On the contrary, she is expected to put bread on it. She wears a business suit, not an apron. She works in an office, not a laundry room. She carries a briefcase, not a baby. But has the pendulum swung too far? Are the expectations placed on contemporary women any less limiting than those imposed on our foremothers? Have we been emancipated, or are we simply slaves to a different, more demanding master, one who expects us to be everything to everybody?
In the current vernacular, “motherhood” appears to be a dirty word. It is fine to have children, in fact, it is presumed of a woman. But mothering is supposed to be a hobby, or at best a part-time job. We have kids on the side, like fries. The real meal, the grade A all-beef burger, is the work we do outside the home. We are not considered to be fully developed, fully fulfilled, fully contributing women unless we have established a career in the wider economic world. So where does that leave women like me?
Are we, the legions of stay-at-home moms, sending a mixed message to our daughters? Do as I say, not as I do? Will we encourage them to be homemakers, or neurosurgeons and prime ministers? Do we want them to emulate our way of life, or escape it? Are we role models or village idiots?
In our legitimate but zealous bid for liberation, have women lost sight of the real freedom—the element of choice: the right to decide for ourselves what makes us successful, satisfied, complete?
We are different from our mothers: we are more stressed, more anxious, more overwhelmed, more depressed. We are tortured by feelings of guilt and inadequacy. We wear a dozen different hats, and not one of them fits quite right. We are expected to manage kids and work as well as husbands, aging parents, fashion, fitness, fun and finance. We are pulled in so many opposing directions that we are drawn and quartered; dismembered, but not quite dead.
• • •
I began to lose my balance the day after I finished my last undergraduate class; the day I married a handsome man I barely knew. Cinderella-like, I waved goodbye to my family, friends and home, and drove off to a new life, staring into the rear-view mirror. I wept every day for two years until my son was born.
Matthew’s first needy cry designed my destiny, and any career dreams that existed beyond his sphere of influence were instantly relegated to another lifetime. Patrick and Stephanie quickly followed, and with three children under the age of four, my fate was sealed tighter than a Tupperware container.
I was a mother.
Once those babies were placed in my arms there was no force in the known universe strong enough to pull us apart. Returning to my job with a national labour organization in Ottawa wasn’t fathomable. I had to stay at home to raise my children. It was a biological imperative.
Changing gears was as effortless as changing diapers. I was born to be a mother. I loved my job and I was good at it. It wasn’t easy work, but it was enormously rewarding. Had I felt the need to produce an excuse for my decision, one that might placate some of my liberated sisters, those who were busy claiming their stake in the corporate echelons, I had a good one. All three of my children had been born with special needs, and my littlest angel, my baby girl, was profoundly disabled.
When my kids were small, life was rich and full and exhausting. I was too happy, too busy and too tired to think about what I might be missing. But as they grew bigger and slightly more self-sufficient, small holes appeared in my schedule that were easily filled with speculation. What if value really was equated with income? What if success really was defined by job status? I felt guilty being in
the house while they were at school, as if keeping the home fires burning and-writing-books-on-the-side was somehow self-indulgent, deficient.
I considered getting a “real job” (my husband’s term for full-time employment outside the home—You have no idea what it’s like to work for a living) but there just weren’t any opportunities that offered the kind of hours I could manage: weekdays 10 a.m to 3 p.m. with school holidays and summers off. I had to be—and wanted to be—at home for my children. They were my purview.
As the boys became adolescents with a healthy sense of adventure, they needed more guidance, supervision and chauffeuring than ever, and Stephanie, who had plateaued at the developmental age of five, would require around-the-clock care for the rest of her life. My services—my love, my support and most of all my presence—were still desperately needed at home. And I desperately wanted to be there to provide them. I was trapped, but I was content to live in captivity.
I was a mother, damn it.
Eventually, my husband left. More than his leaving, it was his disappointment and disapproval that deflated me. In the recesses of my soul I remained true to my own definition of accomplishment and clung to a rebellious sense of self-worth, but closer to the surface, under my thin skin, I let him get to me. I let him convince me that I was a failure. Not a good wife. Not a good mother. Not a good provider. Not a good anything. I was the “oh” at dinner parties, an underachieving embarrassment, and ultimately not worth taking along.
At thirty, I was the only one in my social circle who had the distinction of being a wife, let alone a mother. At forty, my friends were just starting their families and I had three teenagers and an ex-husband.
• • •
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