Laura’s song: This is Me
Laura Parker will perform the solo of her life with Momentum Choir on Sunday
If every person has a theme song, Laura Parker has profoundly, thankfully found hers.
It’s an anthem for outcasts who have found a voice.
Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age 12, she faced an unaccepting, unforgiving world. She was bullied by other children, and relegated to timeouts when teachers decided her behaviour was that of a problem child, and not a symptom of a young girl unable to cope in a world of overwhelming noise, lights and textures.
On Sunday, 21-year-old Laura will sing her anthem, This Is Me from the musical, The Greatest Showman.
Its words — I’m not scared to be seen, I make no apologies, this is me — will spill from her heart and soul into her vocal chords, as she stands in front of an audience at Southridge Community Church during her solo performance alongside Momentum Choir at its May Gala Concert.
The 62-voice choir is made up entirely of people living with disabilities.
Laura joined this season. And during a recent practice, she stood in front of the choir and thanked everyone for accepting her as a friend.
Her mom, Ann, does not worry when Laura is with the choir.
“You come here to be you,” she says.
“Everyone out there has a strength,” she says, “and someone has found it.”
Music is a powerful, emotional language that deeply connects, says music director Mendelt Hoekstra. The choir can empower people to achievements never thought possible. He creates arrangements that allow them to succeed, and insists on high standards, blanketing constructive criticism with love, he says.
“We cheer for each other. When the music starts, disability takes a back seat.”
People with Asperger’s syndrome are on the high-functioning end of autism. They often struggle with social interactions and have a limited range of interests.
As a young girl, Laura was overthe-top sensitive to noise, lights and textures.
In a grocery store, her mother would find her curled up in the bottom of a shopping cart, her coat pulled over her head to cover her ears. In a hot school gym, overwhelmed by the buzz of fluorescent lights, children chattering, laughter, even breathing, and being made to sit close to other kids, out of her normal routine, she hit a boy and was sent for a time out in the principal’s office. Quiet, air conditioned, alone she was at peace. Calm.
“Everything was a blanket piled on my shoulder and over my head,” she says.
“One was fine. Two were fine. But this was 12 and 13 blankets at a time.”
It was suffocating. Oppressive. Overwhelming.
And she blocked it out, by humming.
In the grocery store. Classroom. Library. On the bus to school. At home, she hummed for joy. “Home was my place to be loud,” she says.
If she finished her homework or didn’t fight with her brother, her reward was to sing with her father, David, who died in 2016. He set a record on the turntable; something from The Mamas & the Papas or maybe the Bee Gees.
“He’d take out the headphone jack and use the big speaker,” says Laura. “We’d sing until mom said to stop, or supper was ready or it was bedtime.”
The repetitive, steady beat of the bass drum was soothing. “I kept time to it. One-two-three-four. One-twothree-four.
“It goes straight through you and cuts everything else out,” she says.
Music was predictable in an erratic world.
Just as kids in kindergarten learn how long to wash their hands by singing the ABCs, Laura, who still struggles with the concept of time, organized her world with music.
As she readied herself for school every morning, she completed tasks to the timeline set by The Bangles’ album, Different Light, beginning always with Manic Monday. She knew when she had to get dressed, eat breakfast, shower and brush her teeth by timing those activities to specific songs.
And she imagines the moment when she will sing her first note of This is Me.
It will be much like being perched on the precipice of a roller coaster, eyes wide, adrenaline surging, about to plunge over the drop.
A feeling of triumph. A voice, heard.
In her words: “This is happening.”
We’d sing until mom said to stop, or supper was ready or it was bedtime.” LAURA PARKER MEMBER OF MOMENTUM CHOIR