Something Is Always on Fire

by Measha Brueggergosman

  We in the Western world have the luxury of viewing our children as a choice. Some of us women view having children as a personal goal, forgetting that motherhood is forced on girls less than a third my age. When I drag my sleep-deprived bones out of bed after my child wakes me up at 5:00 a.m. wanting milk, I forget about the parent who reaches for milk and finds none there and no means to replace it. When I’m watching the clock wondering how I’m ever going to plan the hours between the end of nap time and strapping them in at suppertime, I forget about the mother who has a plan to throw her body over those of her children when the bullets inevitably come. And when I’m impatient with their questions, screeching the car to the side of the road because they won’t settle, or wondering how many hugs it’s gonna take to get me out of the daycare and back in the (empty) car? I have to think of the single woman raising her granddaughter, the father bailing his son out of prison and the parents desperate for the phone to ring.

  Can you indulge my gooey parent long enough for me to say my babies are so beautiful? At the time I write this, Shepherd Peter is four and Sterling Markus is almost two. Seeing one picture of them while I’m away (or even when they’re sleeping in the next room!) can reduce me to tears of joy, longing, guilt, tenderness and fear. I think of what makes them smile, how they are untainted by pressure or weariness. My heart aches to realize the crushing blows yet to come their way. Having babies could turn me into a glass-half-empty person because it almost feels like their lives can only go downhill from this clueless state of bliss and innocence.

  I had my children during incredibly optimistic periods of my life. My spiritual life was what could be called “stable,” my marriage still had love in it, my financial outlook was much rosier and I was disenchanted enough with my singing career to believe I’d be happy to change my focus to motherhood. I feel that bringing children into the world is a kind of investment in what you believe could be good about life and the future. But the yang to that yin is the crippling fear that anything will harm them. The inevitability that some idiot will infringe on their childish state of elation and they’ll come home with questions you won’t be able to answer. Tears roll down my face when I speculate on my reaction to things that haven’t even happened. The good parts of my childhood were good, but bad parts of my childhood were baaad. When people say that struggle and strife breed character, those same people should be asked if they’d subject their children to the same struggles that made them who they are today without the guarantee that the outcome would be the same. Because my boys, Shepherd and Sterling, are going to be who God intends them to be. I will have no say in the matter, except to keep them from lighting each other on fire or going to prison.

  No one tells you how conflicted you will feel about being a parent. Yes, it’s hard, and yes, it’s rewarding, yada yada, cliché, cliché. All that stuff is true. But the GUILT. The crushing guilt that comes with even querying: If you had it to do all over again, would you choose to become a parent all over again? Even allowing the question to enter your mind is grounds for crucifixion in our society. The fact is, I can’t go back. So the question is moot. But do I have real doubts about my effectiveness as a parent? Or even my calling to parenthood? You better believe I do! It’s hard to be motivated by love when you just need to get to the bloody bathroom before he pees himself, because you don’t have an extra set of pants. It’s hard to get down on the carpet and play Lego when you know that piece of music isn’t going to learn itself. And staying calm when he just keeps calling “Mama” over and over and over and over and over from the back seat and you’re on the phone with yet another person who needs something really important from you right this very minute. How do children not know everything isn’t about them? I mean, there are other people in the room and they are talking to people other than you. What makes kids think they can just barrel in with a request or a completely unrelated topic with the unshakable belief that the entire environment revolves around them? It makes me want to tear my hair out. And then I watch them try to eat spaghetti and forget what I was complaining about.

  Because you also know that children are an investment, so if you don’t put anything in, you won’t get anything out. And it’s useless to complain, because you are their world. For my children, the only thing that stands between them and the big world (and the scary sound the coffee grinder makes) is Mama. There will never be another point in their lives where I fulfill their needs so wholly and completely. Markus is as committed as a daddy can be to his sons . . . but he’s not Mama.

  Granted, you need money to raise them, and beyond money, you need a contentment with yourself that can only be cultivated by living your best life. And then they become an inextricable part of that Best Life. Heck, sometimes they are quite literally the best part of your life. I never thought I’d be that much of a cliché, but with the inferno blazing in most areas of my life right now, seeing my children is the best part of my day. My son sometimes asks to hold my hand. I never say no. Sometimes I need to hold his hand, too. It’s a love language between us, and in the precious evenings when I get to put him to bed and he doesn’t want cuddle time to end, I tell him to close his eyes and focus on the feel of Mama’s hand in his. I tell him to commit how it feels to memory—the grip, its tightness, the warmth—and know that even when our hands aren’t physically linked, we can still remember how it feels. And even as my heart is bruising from the guilt of desperately wanting to be left alone to drink the glass of red wine on the counter downstairs, he gives over to the assurance of things unseen and lets go of Mama’s hand with his eyes still closed.

  My Shepherd is already teaching me the consequences of time well spent. Both he and Sterling can read me like a book. They’re not children. They’re tiny Buddhas. And they’re always watching and they forgive me so easily when I invariably screw up. I tell them that giving and getting forgiveness is equally important, because if you can’t give forgiveness, you can’t get it, either.

  I’ve heard it said so many times that having children can make you a better person. I don’t know if I agree with that, but I do know that being observed by eyes that are seeing things for the very first time has a way of making you examine yourself and your actions. The first time Shepherd came home with a note saying he’d used a bad word at kindergarten, I told him that coming home with bad words was the same as bringing the flu into our house. I said that Mama understood that he’s intelligent enough to understand the power that words have; otherwise he wouldn’t be acting like someone who knew he was about to be punished. I told my beautiful boy—who is clearly sorry—that using bad words is the same as kicking or spitting on someone, because our words have the power to do much more damage than our fists or feet. God should be in everything we say or do because He made us to love Him and others.

  I don’t speak to my four-year-old like he hasn’t got a brain. He may still believe that vegetables can talk or think his birthday can be every day, but he also understands that there is more power in him than he has yet to acknowledge, and it’s my job to help him self-actualize so that he can contribute to this world in his unique, positive way.

  Mama’s still working on, well, everything (aren’t we all?), but it doesn’t make trying to teach self-worth (to my sons—and to myself, while I’m at it) any less of a worthwhile pursuit.

  When you think of the things that are holding you back, sometimes the answers aren’t what you’d expect. It’s not that my children hold me back necessarily, but having them sleep in the same room with me while I’m working definitely impedes my ability to get a good night’s rest while they sleep, well, like babies. I don’t begrudge them their time with Mama. I just need to know that if I can’t afford a four-bedroom apartment in downtown Madrid for the six weeks of my contract at the opera house, I’m going to have to wear earplugs and be prepared to be slapped in the face by my four-year-old a few times during the night.

  By the same token, it’s a good thing I’m an opera singer, because if I wasn�
�t, I’m quite sure I’d be a stressed-out chain-smoker. What’s holding me back from my career in smoking is my career as an opera singer. I know it is the height of stupidity to smoke cigarettes given what we know about the death sentence that comes with inhaling carcinogenic toxins into your lungs, but it just looks sooo cool. And I have a very strong oral fixation, so smoking would really work for me if I wasn’t an opera singer. The one thing I won’t do is sacrifice my livelihood for the sake of looking cool. Plus, cancer sucks.

  I signed up for a life of humidifiers, lozenges and herbal tea. I know the benefits of vocal rest outweigh the stress of singing with a voice that is less than fresh. I’m not saying I can’t tie one on with the best of ’em. It’s just that the sacrifices I make for my profession are worth it, because I want to be good at my job since it also happens to be my calling.

  Can I say the same about motherhood? There is such a steep learning curve to becoming Mama. I know there are instinctual things that do come naturally—I could recognize my babies’ cries, could sense what they needed, understand their first seemingly unintelligible words. I know that for them, there is no substitute for Mama. But I’m not a roly-poly mom. I’m not the least bit interested in building blocks or toys. I see those as distractions that allow me some freedom or a few moments of peace. I’m not going to spend an entire afternoon doing fingerpainting. What my boys understand is that if they need something cooked, or a book read, or a piece of art praised, I’m the mother for that. I am their biggest fan. If they’ve got a scratch and need a bandage—or if they just like bandages and want to wear one—then I’ll hand out the superhero bandage. Why should you have to get hurt to wear a bloody bandage? But the playground? I’ll keep you from cracking your head open, but we’re not playing tag.

  With my twenty-three-month old, he’s just happy to have me in the same spot so that he knows where I am and can bring me things or sit on me. We have full-on conversations despite all his sentences not being filled with actual words. I believe I know what he’s saying. And what does it matter if I’m right or not? He’s my son. I had to make my peace with the strengths and weaknesses I bring to their upbringing, resisting the pressure of allowing the type of mom I am to be influenced by factors not privy to the intimacy that exists between my sons and me. So, that would mean everyone. I’m blessed to have a job where, for the most part—if I’m not learning or singing music—my time belongs to my sons when I’m at home. That’s a real gift. But it was an adjustment. All you parents, take a minute to remember what your life was like before you had kids and then fill in the blank: “Before I had kids, I could . . . ”

  Parents who say they can’t remember what their life was like before they had kids are lying. Or they want to wilfully forget because it depresses them too much. Leaving the house whenever you wanted, getting enough sleep, day drinkin’. I swear half my life is spent fastening and unfastening those blasted car-seat safety straps. And when the boys have winter coats on? The Seventh Circle of Hell will be nothing but fastening screaming children wearing winter coats into their car seats.

  Whenever I get frustrated, or need a reboot, I always take a deep breath followed by a swift exhale: in and out through my nose. Hot yoga, Vipassana, you name it. It’s just something I’ve conditioned my body to do. My four-year-old has started asking me about it. Because it happens a lot. I explained to him that it sometimes means that Mama is frustrated. I see it as an opportunity to teach him about the power of taking a deep breath to calm yourself and see a situation more clearly. But yeah. Most of the time it means I’m pissed.

  My days as a mom require far more energy and endurance than my days as an opera singer. If anything, by comparison, becoming a parent has made being an opera singer easier. There’s a longer detrimental consequence to screwing up your kids than there is to screwing up an entrance in Tales of Hoffman. I’m much easier on myself as Singer since becoming Mama, because I know that at the end of the day, my performances are not seeds that bear sustainable fruit in the spiritual sense. They are a snapshot. A gorgeous, profoundly moving and complex snapshot for which I am paid a livable wage. They end, and after I give myself to you, I get to come home to myself, in a sense.

  To unpack that a little, I don’t mean to imply that art doesn’t matter—or that classical music doesn’t matter. I just don’t think I can take playing dress-up and screaming for a living as being as consequential as changing my absolutely dependent baby enough times a day that he doesn’t get diaper rash. Some might think it’s not fair to compare the two, but why wouldn’t I? It’s all the same life and I’m one of a large demographic living the same work-life matrix. I’m also not going to dismiss what I’ve accomplished by saying, I’m hardly curing cancer, because I do believe that music is balm to the soul and the human voice reaches people in a very special way. Only that being responsible for two tiny humans is hardly the same as deciding if I go with the sequins or the satin. I knew I was fully Mama when I was standing in the drugstore with only enough money for false eyelashes or diapers and it was a no-brainer.

  Yes, I am both Mama and Singer. But not to my boys I’m not. By the same token, the entertainment industry doesn’t care that I’m a mom. But within myself, the two must work in tandem and reconcile themselves to each other. I just know my job and my other job make each other better. If Mama and Singer don’t find a way to work together, then the conflict between the two will make both suffer. If I’ve not organized myself to be fully present when playing my roles, then why bother doing either one?

  I chose to become a mom in a much more conscious way than I chose to become an opera singer. Singing was my calling so early in life that it hardly felt like a choice. I wasn’t forced or coerced, and I’m grateful it found me, but there is no question that singing is something I’m meant to be doing full-time—for as long as it works out. As I get older in this job, I realize that time away from it is essential. The aging opera singer can be a beautiful thing, but it can also be a bastion of bitterness and regret. Like any job that can take everything from you but give very little in return, being a classical musician isn’t generally something you just fall into. It demands that you work and sacrifice and eat a lot of crap in order to pursue your dreams. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the bigger the stakes. Slap a coat of conservativism onto the old-guard mentality, the gay mafia, the politics of voice classification, sizeism, ageism and people not even in the game having something to say about “your last Antonia,” and you’ve uncovered some of the downsides of my job.

  I don’t want to live that way. I don’t want to think that I’m only as good as my last gig. I don’t want to beg to be liked by people whose opinions—and the inherent exclusionism they’re couched in—don’t scratch the surface of what my actual goals are. I want my memories to be more than short-term and my relationships to be lifelong instead of the length of a contract. I don’t want to equate not being in my own bed for months out of the year as some badge of honour and my lack of dependants as true freedom.

  My mother and I once watched a movie called Quartet together about a retirement home for aging opera singers. It starred Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon. There is no potential outcome more depressing to me than spending my final days with a group of people who did the exact same thing as me for their whole lives. That the sum of my life could amount to reliving my glory days—gossiping about dead conductors, listening to old recordings—would be a fate worse than death. Tears streaming down my face, I sat and watched, horrified, unable to breathe from the panic, slowly shaking my head. I honestly bawled my eyes out from start to finish at the very premise that if I didn’t cultivate more things of value in my life, that could very well be me one day: perishing in the ashes of recordings no one listens to anymore from programs and productions I can’t sing anymore. What gets me up in the morning is the prospect of cultivating a life where, in the end, I will be surrounded by people who loved me for the person I was and the adventures we conquered together, not
the repertoire I sang or the voice type I was. The movie Quartet is my Scream.

  I grew up, as I’ve said, the youngest of three—the singular achiever—with my husband as my manager, handler and baby maker. And despite not being the most natural fit, the role of Mama grows more and more fulfilling to me, because it is played to a tiny, exclusive club of two (pint-sized) superhumans who happen to have lived inside my body before they ever saw the light of day. It tickles me to think that the same people I’ll want beside me when the career is over and the crowds are gone were made in my own belly. It is a very elite club and I don’t take lightly the fact that, at this point, that is how my young sons see it, as well. I belong to them. Their worlds literally collapse if I’m in the room and they can’t get to me.

  As they grow older, I know that bond will evolve and develop into whatever they need. It will become increasingly creepier for me to put their feet in my mouth or watch them while they sleep . . . not that that will stop me.

  PART 4

  WHY AM I HERE?

  DATE: SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010, 9:17 AM

  FROM: MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN

  TO: NEARESTS AND DEARESTS

  SUBJECT: PRESSING ON

  Hey Gang,

  Another Sunday has arrived and I’m still here. It may sound like I’m counting them down because I can’t wait for it to be over, but I’m also ;-) amazed at how quickly the time is going. This week was the most emotional I’ve had so far. But the funny thing is, I feel absolutely fine now. There was a bit of panic, of feeling raw and overwhelmed. I melted down and then poof! Over. It kinda felt like the sweat that comes out of my pores (in massive amounts) every day. All these emotions and unexpressed “whatevers” are there percolating in the bones. They have to come out somehow in order for the body and mind to balance and regulate itself, and after they do, they dry up like sweat. Mind you, it’s painful. Lord, is it ever painful. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. For a lot of the students here, this past week has been Meltdown Week: yogis in tears in the elevator, on their mats before/after/during class, in the Porta Potties, you name it. You can’t predict where or when the meltdown’s gonna strike. It’s an intense process. You all know that I prefer not to cry in public, so my release happened in private, in my room, and I had some pretty wonderful support.