I was a changeling, switched at birth with a baby who had died. Torn between my two identities, I was neither. I was no one.
What a sadly compelling story Gail Gallant shares in her memoir My Life as a Changeling: After Gallant's parents lost the youngest of their three daughters, Gail, in a road accident, her devoutly Catholic mother begged God to send her back to them. When another baby girl was born the following year – with all the same features and attended by a pain-free birth – her mother declared it a miracle and named this infant “Gail” as well. Eventually giving birth to three more children, the busy mother's attention and affection were hard to come by, but as the “miracle baby”, Gail enjoyed her special place in the family's mythology – until she grew older and realised the psychological toll this otherness, this “changeling” role, had taken upon her. Gail Gallant's story isn't of some extraordinary life meant to enthrall or entertain the reader, but her experiences are just unusual enough to have expanded my notion of what a life can look like; and that's a good reading experience to me. (Note: I read an ARC and quotes may not be in their final forms.)
I began to see a psychiatrist. For the first time ever, I started to really think about the role the other Gail had played in my life. The circumstances of my birth had always made me feel special. At the same time, though, I felt as if I had to do something special to deserve this miracle. I had to make up for the family tragedy. Pay the debt.My own mother – from Prince Edward Island like the author – was meant to be named Maggie until my grandparents' best friends lost their infant daughter, Brenda, to some epidemic, and in honour of her, my mother was christened with the name “Brenda” as well; at no time, however, was it suggested that my mother was that same wee soul sent back to Earth (yet now I wonder what effect this tossed-off story actually had on her child's mind?) By contrast, Gail Gallant was told that she was the return of the dead Gail, and she began to worry why God had answered her mother's prayers when children died (and stayed dead) all the time; what purpose did God have for her? She became particularly pious (which earned her some degree of approval from her cold mother), but young Gail was terrified that the Virgin Mary would appear to her and assign her some dangerous task suited to the saints and martyrs that she learned about. She began to experience a duality in her personality – Gail believed that other Gail lived under her bed – and she became so adept at projecting one face (the pious) while hiding her true one (the terrified), that she embarked on a life in which no one ever saw the “real Gail”. As she details her entire life story, this duality had repercussions for her in school, at work, and in her personal relationships. And through it all, her mother remained cold and her father remained distant; this is not the story of a happy life.
All my life, you have been my dead sister. They named me after you. I am so much like you, if you'd been born later, they'd have named you after me. But you are more real than I have ever been. Admit it. You are Gail. I am only the “other Gail”.I find it intriguing that Gallant has successfully harnessed her early dread of/fascination with the supernatural – she has written a couple of YA books around hauntings – and I appreciate the thoughtfulness and reflection she has put into this memoir. Maybe not of wide appeal, but I am pleased to have learned of Gallant's unusual origins.
I may have liked this even more for the points of similarity I found between the author and me: Not just the bit about my mother's name (which really is odd), but because her parents were from PEI, the entire family would drive down there every summer from their Toronto-area home (on such a trip, the original Gail died in a crash); and as my mother, my brothers, and I were all born in PEI, my family would drive down there every summer from our Toronto-area home. The Catholicism wasn't so pronounced in my home, but I recognised what Gallant was talking about - and I may not have feared an apparition from the Virgin Mary, but I certainly did fear accidentally conjuring "Bloody Mary" in the dark of my bedroom. Finally, I was touched deeply by the scene in which Gallant went to her first birthday party and she wanted to cry when the girl's father got all the friends together in a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, "Until that moment, I had believed that all fathers were depressed and disengaged by nature." 'Nuff said about that, but I did have many pings of recognition while reading this book and want to stress that I don't think of three stars as a mediocre rating.
