Something Is Always on Fire Read online

  I had one (supposed) friend who was quite popular but who acknowledged me only when it served her purposes. In other words, when others weren’t around so there would be no witnesses to our alleged friendship. She was so fickle I’ve bleached her name from my memory. The lesson I learned from her is the hemorrhaging bruise of betrayal. Although I was never physically tormented—I don’t think I would have allowed that—the psychological games were just as damaging. The most painful part of the bullying from this girl and the others was the horrible, horrible name they called me. To steal its power, I refuse to say it, but the memories of children chanting it still take my breath away. It imprinted on me the idea that I was fat and ugly. I now know I wasn’t obese as a kid, simply bigger and taller and darker than the others. Different. I would one day discover that you eventually become what you believe you already are.

  My parents knew I was being bullied—I never had any trouble telling them—and I never thought the bullying was my fault, because my parents’ love taught me that I was worthy of being respected. They would eventually descend on the home of one of the boys who was particularly cruel, and since the northside neighbourhood was quite small, other parents likely saw my parents’ car roll up to their house. Word spread among the adults, and I believe they were ashamed enough to speak to their kids, and the problem decreased.

  While I felt isolated at school, my church provided a sanctuary with its empowering ministries. One such program was called Pioneer Girls. It had a kind of mentoring-buddy program and my partner was Lois Bolden, who lived on the south side. Once, I was invited to Bolden’s Diner, which was like a kitchen, except it had all these extra people sitting around and you picked what food you wanted from a list! I was seven or eight years old so I could read, but I had never seen a menu before. That diner flabbergasted me! So did Lois’s rambling Victorian house—the largest house I’d ever been in—for only one family. What do you do with all those rooms? One contained only a washing machine and dryer. And where do these stairs go? Wait. There’s another level with bedrooms?

  It was so mammoth and exotic that I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  Please bear in mind my family hardly lived in squalor. It’s just that there was a room for every couple and child, with no extra space for superfluous things like entertaining or lounging. We didn’t have an “upstairs” or a pantry. We had the den and the big cupboard or the cold room. We didn’t have hardwood floors. We had wall-to-wall. We had a backyard and a piano that actually got used.

  My mother takes great pride in her home. Even if she had the money to spend, I think her design choices would be guided by her ingenuity, creativity and her commitment to not spend money needlessly when she could just make it work with her own hands. I have known her to hand-paint this, glue that back together, resurface a good find and repurpose something else. She taught me that a good eye is priceless and that no amount of money can take your taste out of your mouth if you haven’t got a sense of style.

  If my church provided sanctuary, so too did my voice lessons. The reason I began taking lessons was that Mrs. Wilkins singled me out. She told my parents that I had good pitch relation, along with a kind of fearlessness that could be good onstage, and that if they put me in voice lessons, I was to also take piano lessons so I’d be able to read and play the music I had to learn. My parents had made it their mandate to discover and cultivate the gifts of their children. They asked David Steeves, the music director of our church, to become my voice and piano teacher. He was a very patient, loving and nurturing teacher, a teacher for whom mentoring was an act of service. He remains my musical role model, and I am still very proud and touched that he played at my wedding.

  I also sang in Mrs. Wilkins’s Huggy Choir, a chorale ensemble for gifted children. Receiving this musical mentoring at such a young age was critical in encouraging me to believe that becoming a classical musician wasn’t some risky undertaking but a viable career option. I put all my eggs in one basket and developed no other marketable skills, and I’m glad I did. I have always forged forward in the confidence that my contribution to this world was always going to be first and foremost as Singer.

  When I was around nine, I endured a brief stint with the violin that ended badly. My piano lessons had taught my brain that both hands should be doing essentially the same thing, and that proved a pattern difficult to break. With the piano, sound is created by mechanical motions from inside the instrument, whereas with the violin, notes are the result of exterior mechanics. I didn’t understand how such a contrary instrument could create beautiful music, since the sounds I was making bore a striking resemblance to a dying bird. My violin gave up on me halfway through our first year, though I stubbornly clung to its unresponsive corpse till year’s end.

  Today the way skilled violinists seem to effortlessly create grandiosity through the precision of microscopic movements is still a miracle to me. I can admire the athleticism of their technique without loving the technique of the instrument; plus, violinists spend their careers trying to create sound that mimics the human voice. Both require pristine intonation and exactitude of movement to achieve a (seemingly) effortless result, so I’ve never felt like I missed out.

  The best instrumentalists are their own species, just like the best singers. Singing came naturally to me, unlike playing the violin or the piano, so I didn’t necessarily have to muster the courage to stand in front of an audience. Mrs. Wilkins became a hugely important influence, both as my teacher and as the founder of the District 18 Girls’ Choir, which provided me on-the-job experience, as it were, from elementary through high school.

  Despite my parents’ attention to nurturing my talent, the Gosman house was never bursting with music. My whole family is musical, but as we kids were growing up, it was usually just me singing or playing. Our family didn’t listen to any secular music unless it was on CBC Radio. Music and faith were a reflection and edification of the other. I see that now as a subtle underlining of my parents’ faith and philosophy: What goes into a child’s head at an early age—especially if it’s set to music—will have a huge, long-term influence over the child’s inner narrative. I believe my father loved to hear any singing in our house because he carries fond memories of his own mother’s singing voice, so Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on CBC, with Howard Dyck presenting, was a real favourite.

  My mom was also on board with all my musical goals. As a reward for passing one of my Royal Conservatory exams, she created “Measha’s Special Music Book,” which was held together with colourful twisted pipe cleaners and had a hand-drawn cover. It contained secular music (gasp!), like the theme from Cheers, the theme from Fame, Debbie Gibson’s “Electric Youth,” Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting.” Many eighties gems.

  Knowing at such an early age what I wanted to do with my life played a role in isolating me from the other kids, which in a lot of ways wasn’t so bad. My loneliness and my insecurity encouraged me to value my individuality—to develop my solo mentality. My focus on music also meant that I was never academically committed to subjects like math or the sciences. I sort of experienced my French-immersion elementary-school teachers as one-dimensional cartoons. In grade one I was taught by a large, maternal, cushy woman. In grade two my teacher was thin, angular and severe. My grade three teacher was beautiful, with wavy white-blond hair so different from mine—I don’t remember her personality. My grade four teacher seemed like a tyrannical overlord, always angry and screaming—both my brother and sister had warned me about this harridan; yet when I met her as an adult, she was delightful and was likely never the gargoyle we thought she was.

  By grade five I and my classmates had a reputation for being the worst hellions ever to haunt the halls of Park Street Elementary School. One day when our teacher came into the room with a dab of ink on his face, we laughed at him so hard that he turned pale, walked stiffly to the door, slowly opened it, shut it calmly behind him and never ever came back.

  Nashwaaksis Junior Hig
h, which I attended from grades seven to nine, was a transitional time for me. Yes, the bullying continued, but changes were also taking place inside me.

  Not all good.

  I, the bullied, became a bully.

  When a girl at Na’sis called me the N-word, I punched her in the face and left her crying with a bloody nose. I assume she weighed what she’d done to me against what I’d done to her and decided not to tell, because she never bothered me again. I did the same. Even though I (technically) got away with it, I still feel really, really bad that I resorted to physical violence.

  Another payback involved a boy I really liked. He had auburn hair and very blue eyes and a great Harlequin-romance name—something like Carrington Steele, although I can’t remember his name exactly. But you know the type. He turned up in our school from somewhere else, then became a kingpin in a group that bullied me, or tried to bully me (because I didn’t care as much as they’d hoped I would). One day after school I saw him walking toward me by himself, so I said, “Why are you such a jerk?” He pretended that he had no idea what I was talking about. This was beyond rich, so I pushed him. He pushed me back and we ended up kind of wrestling. I didn’t want to hurt him and I didn’t want him to go away, so I just kept punching him to keep him close! I’ve since learned subtler strategies for flirting . . . I don’t remember what happened to Bartholomew Harrisford, Esq. (or whatever his name was) after that. Needless to say, we never dated. And that was the last time I ever hit anyone.

  My parents, ever observant, could see my survivor’s instincts had me choosing fight over flight. They funnelled my abundance of negative energy into another solo pursuit: speed-skating. I took to it immediately. It’s such an elegant sport and I really loved it, although I wasn’t much of a competitor. I think I just enjoyed the cool wind in my face. I’ve never considered myself much of an outdoorsy type, but I loved how the cold air would intensify the faster I skated, filling my lungs with frosty, neutralizing air and cooling me from the inside out. I can see how I was cleansed through the process, and though I was never emotionally close to the other skaters, they provided a different pool of kids, in which I felt safer. It still brings tears to my eyes when I think of how the simplicity of circling a frozen surface on long blades brought me genuine physical empowerment, and thus fortified the dikes of my inner island so to speak. For this reason, I understand the power that sport can have in the lives of children.

  Throughout my childhood I always felt like I carried a secret. Even in moments of unaffected closeness—sitting with my family, everyone smiling in comfortable contentedness—I felt that I had this rich inner life that somehow made me unknowable.

  In my debut album on CBC Records with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra conducted by Roy Goodman, ironically titled So Much to Tell (released in 2007), I sang Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” set to a poem by James Agee. It speaks of a time when Agee lived “disguised to myself as a child.” Listening to the gentle sounds of the evening, when his mother, his father, his uncle and his aunt would spread their quilts “on the rough, wet grass of the backyard” under the stars and talk of nothing in particular. He goes on to say all of them were “larger bodies than mine,” all of them were good to him. They treated him as one beloved, but he was certain they did not, and never would, know who he was.

  I have sung this epic wordscape the whole of my career because I still feel that way—that events happen outside me, involving me with people I love but to whom I’m not really connected in the deepest sense. I’m much closer to some than to others, but no one can make it in all the way. I remain autonomous. An alien. I often wonder if this is how everyone feels. I don’t feel sorry about it, because it just is; I share what I can articulate and consciously do my best to not be withholding or withdrawn, but in the end, I’ve never felt wholly known by another living soul.

  DATE: FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010, 7:43 PM

  FROM: MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN

  TO: NEARESTS AND DEARESTS

  SUBJECT: JUMPING INTO THE DEEP END

  Hello Nearests and Dearests!

  Greetings from Las Vegas. We’ve had our orientation and it’s been very enlightening to watch it play out this week. I’ve been very naive about the purpose and impact this process has the potential to have on my mind and body. If you’ve gotten this email, then you know that my life hasn’t been particularly smooth these past years, and up until the very last minute I didn’t know if I’d have the strength, resolve, courage or resources to come. Well, I’m here, and now I need to make sure that I have the strength, resolve, courage and resources to stay.

  At the opening orientation, a lot of advice gets thrown at you by a lot of people. These were some of the things I heard that really stuck:

  “Trust the process.”

  “Don’t get bogged down with what’s not happening for you.”

  “Set aside everything you think you know.”

  “All injury and illness is a result of some imbalance in your life.”

  “This nine weeks is about spending time on yourself.”

  “It’s a one-time deal. Unique, simple and powerful.”

  “Be present. Stay focused.”

  “You are meant to be here.”

  So, I’m re-evaluating my situation. I will turn off my phone starting tonight (April 23, 2010) and will turn it on again on June 19 after I graduate. We, the students, have been told that this course is just a tool to get us to the starting line to begin the marathon. That’s what I was told, and what I chose to believe, about my bariatric surgery, and that process definitely changed my life for the better. So please support me by getting to me anything and everything you need from me over the next few days, because I’ve committed to shutting off my phone and keeping my computer turned off.

  When I think of how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it, it’s enough to make me repack my stuff and leave. It will be just as hard for me to NOT check email or turn on my phone as it will be for you all to not hear from me. But I’ve committed to this, refinanced my house and paid thousands of dollars to be here. I wasn’t sure if shutting off all communication was really the best thing, until it got reiterated over and over and over in the orientation, in the course book and then in my heart. I deserve the chance to give myself the opportunity to be better and get to the source of, and work through, my sadness and frustration.

  Please don’t worry about me. As hard as I know it will be, I feel optimistic. I feel like I’m at least allowing myself to be open to some kind of a change in direction. I’m trying to keep myself free from all expectations and just let the next nine weeks happen to me and me to it.

  Much love,

  Measha

  Who doesn’t have a complicated relationship with his or her body? I think the eternal struggle for truth and acceptance with your physical self is a dialogue that lasts your whole life. At any given moment in my life I have caught myself obsessed with my body, or ignoring it, or doing some mixture of the two.

  When I hit junior high, this dialogue was in full swing. My body began to feel foreign to me. When I had my first period, my mother carefully explained, “This means your body can make a baby.”

  “But I don’t want a baby!” I gasped.

  She became more specific. “This happens to your body so you can have babies if and when you decide you do want them.”

  My mother was a total champ in the delicate dance of making this female rite of passage meaningful without overly inflating it. I wasn’t scared, but I would have preferred to not have had to deal with it. At first, I thought that if I sat on the toilet long enough, all the blood would just run out. The failure of this strategy called for further explanation from my mom.

  How I felt about my developing body was already burdened by the nasty, bullying names I had been called, making my body the barrier between others and me. Another contributing factor: I was molested twice before my tenth birthday. I don’t remember my exact ages, but by the time I
was ten I understood what had happened, that it wasn’t my fault and that it wasn’t going to happen again.

  The first time was an older man who lived alone. I was allowed to freely roam the streets surrounding my Oak Avenue home on Fredericton’s north side, and he lived in the vicinity. I tried not to attach too much emotion to his touching of my private parts. I mean, I didn’t really understand that they were private. I just knew they were parts. But I do remember that the salt of his sweaty fingers burned me, and what he did felt unpleasant. I told my mom, thinking it wasn’t a big deal. After that I never saw that man again. In my mind, my father made him vanish. But it could have also been my mother. That’s certainly what I would do, now that I have babies of my own. The person would simply be gone. My parents and I never really spoke about it, but I remember feeling safe and protected. I never fixated on it, because it got handled.

  With my cousin I believe what happened was a childhood experiment, carried out by the corrupted on the innocent. It could have escalated far beyond what happened had an older female cousin not walked in and put a stop to it. Again we never really talked about it. My family just stopped going over there.

  I harbour no ill-will toward the guilty parties. I will never publish their names or carry out some vendetta. There’s no need. I’ve obviously won. But I do know that this early arousal of sensations appropriately reserved for adults did affect my body image and my outlook on trust and intimacy. I’m grown enough to also understand the impact of that early sexualization on my relationships. I take responsibility for my recurring challenges with fidelity, my complicated relationship to food and my problems with impatience and anger. I accept and acknowledge them as symptoms and consequences to a happening I can neither change or deny.

  Of course these things are painful, and I only occasionally let them come to the forefront of my mind for examination. I see no reason to dwell on what is done. Still, if I had my life to do again, one of the big changes I would make would be to try to heal my confusion about my body. I would attempt at a younger age to make a distinction between what I see and feel versus what others want and feel entitled to. I don’t think I understood the division between what I had to offer and my ability to choose not to give it. I was empowered in a way that was divorced from my physical self, so the two coexisted but rarely interacted.