“What’s it like?” she asks shyly, unsure she wants an honest answer. I pause, consider. “Is your…” (she looks for witnesses within earshot, leans in to whisper) “...patootie ever the same again?”

Ahhh, the child-free friend. How morbid is her curiosity? This is the question you must ask yourself before answering. I take a deep breath and begin, gathering unexpected, uncensored momentum on the downhill slide.

Despite qualifying the epic with plenty of ‘wasn’ts’, ‘nots’, ‘buts’ and ‘not-alwayses’, the inquirer will always – always – depart your company with the following nuggets churning around in her head:

• giant needle
• third-degree tear
• alien abduction
• squishy
• episiotomy
• “just a little cut”
• fifteen masked strangers
• strapped down
• stitches
• drippy
• droopy
• industrial-strength
• barf
• bucket
• audience
• “…and then the head came out”
• “couldn’t sit down for a week…”

Then I look at her and realize her mouth is open, slack-jawed as she listens. She looks as though she’s just made a decision. Perhaps to never get pregnant. Ooops.

I know now why mothers relish the chance to describe their labours in terms of fantastical gore. We do it nonchalantly (“You only had first-degrees? Lucky twit! I tore all the way back to my *@$*&#$!”) to make a point: none of it mattered as much as we thought it would.

None of it was as scary as I thought it would be, or as uncomfortable. I healed. I lost the inhibitions, the scars, the embarrassment, the weight. The mystery is gone, replaced by a confidence-building matter-of-factness. Experience trumps melodrama. Hearing these words come out of my mouth – remembering that it all happened to me – gives me a secret, deep-down pride. Pride that I can be nonchalant. I own it. I mastered it. I survived it. It’s mine, down to every last popsicle. I cherish the mess of it. You do too, don’t you?

Problem is, such gore-cherishing costs the inquirer dearly. Next time we’re together, I must rewind – tell her more about the magic, the sweet, palpable female righteousness, the deliciousness, the godliness, the super-heroineness. The awe on a new daddy’s face.

But there’s really nothing I can say, is there? She won’t know for herself until she discovers her own reserves of strength and humour and bravery. And she will. Until then, I hope she’ll forgive me. And eventually stop doubting the continuing sprightliness of my patootie.

In late 1760, an island homestead in the middle of Mahone Bay was attacked. The family were wealthy Huguenots – French Protestants not welcomed by either side. Micmac Indians scalped the father and kidnapped his pregnant wife and three small children, trekking them on a forced epic overland to Quebec City where they were sold as a prize to the French.

They were my people, I’m told. One of hundreds of twists of fate either cruel and deliberate or random and blessed that conspired to spit me into the world in 1973.

In 1755, Andreas and Philip, German brothers newly arrived in Lunenburg, heard tales of cattle abandoned and ripe for the taking in the wake of the Acadian expulsion. They up and bushwhacked across the province to Grand-Pré to rescue (or salvage, or steal, depending on your perspective) as many cows as they could. There and back again, racing to beat the winter, the journey took them more than three months. They were here, in Lunenburg, huffing up the steep lanes from the fishing fleets to the churches at the top of the hill. Past the very same bumps and stoops and housefronts that flank our favourite haunts 250 years later.

The lives of our fore-folk are often hollywood-grade, all romance and heroism and double-crossing and tragedy. Such is the case for all of us, if you look (my friend Michael’s great-great-grandfather was a notorious Jamaican pirate, honest-to-god). Even the ordinary ones are magical: the Truro photographer who took such affectionate portraits of his lovely wife in the 1920s. Newton Sponagle, the late-1800s sea captain who sailed the world with his battered wooden chest. It now holds our Halloween costumes, his name hand-etched on the inside.

There was John Robson, my Grampa Joe’s father, posted to lead the honour guard of England’s King Edward VIII during WWII. Tricky Eddie, not only suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer but having abdicated his throne for an American divorcee, was industriously packed off to Bermuda where a Canadian contingent helped him run his conveniently distant governorship. A blessing? Perhaps. John was out of the melee, but far from his beloved wife Katherine.

A few months ago their wartime letters miraculously found their way to us, full of love. How he missed her, their children. Don’t let them get you dearest, he wrote cheerfully. Keep little Don by the scruff of his neck (hey! that’s my Grampa) if he gets rowdy.

What will someone find of us, tucked in an attic?

Family trees are never real, never evocative. Not like holding the artifacts of a life in your hand, crumbly or fragile or mossy as they are. Like finding a packet of forgotten love letters embalmed in a moldy purse, stuck in the rafters of a stranger’s horse barn. This is when your history brushes up against you, seeps through your skin like a ghost that leaves finger smudges. I was here. I was alive. I struggled and fought and risked. Loved and birthed and laughed and protected, just like you. This was mine: this, right here. This thing, this place.

Thick with many generations of Nova Scotians on one side, longtime New Brunswickers on the other. No wonder Evan likes the taste of seawater.

I don’t feel guilty. Well, not exactly.

I didn’t feel guilty when he didn’t know I was going to leave him.

But now, he squirms when we drive up to the school, nervous and clingy. The longer I stay, the harder it is. I run away the moment he turns his back, dash to the car with my jacket pulled up over my head like it's my first courthouse appearance.

I’m a pragmatist. I don’t entertain melodramatic abandonment theories or notions of emotional trauma. I don’t believe that unaccompanied circle time will crush his spirit or cause him to resent me for life. It’s healthy to mix things up, give him a chance to find his own feet in the world. Surrounded by colour and vibrancy and structure and songs and cheerful encouragement, all generated by others in a mama-vacuum.

I believe it’s more important to be thankful: thankful that I don’t have to leave him there five days a week. When he's ready, I'll have two full days of dedicated working time, a reliable timeslot to bring in much-needed income. And he gets a whole new roomful of toys and two playgrounds.

Win-win, right? Right. As soon as a stranger-for-hire changes his barfy shirt post-mamaleftmeagain freakout, he’ll have a wonderful time.

On this fourth morning of playschool, I do the same as for the past three: come home, shower, write for therapy and wait for 11:30. So I can sneak up on him from behind a bush and watch him, happy, unknowing. Playing and toddling and fending for himself with confidence. That’s how I know it’s going to be okay.

He is at daycare – renamed ‘playschool’, my spoonful of sugar – this morning, for the first time. “Just go,” said the friendly lady. “Go now.”

I don’t feel guilty. He’ll have a better time there than he will at home, what with circle time and craft time and snack time and dancing time. He needs it, and it’s only two days a week.

But leaving him to cry with a stranger... I’ve never been a fan of rapid band-aid removal.

Later this day: I snuck up, hid behind a bush, watched him during outside time. He sat absorbed in the sand box, collecting rocks and putting them in a bucket while preschoolers ran circles around him in a boisterous blur. Such pride.

He was fine without me, holding his own. Being called honey by somebody new. They called to him, drew him over to the slide, where he scrambled up. That’s when I popped my head into the tunnel, and he pulled himself afoot to look into my face.

As he gaped at me I saw it all rush back to him – I’ve been here by myself, and mama left. Oh! Oh. And he ran to me, suddenly desperate and face-burying. But I saw you – I whispered to him. You were grand.

NO is multipurpose:

Put me down!
Pick me up!
Give me that.
Take this.
I see waves.
Take me over there.
Stay here.
Don’t move.
Move.

The morning’s first unfortunate caller gets it smack in the ear without warning when a benign enough question – how are you? – is answered honestly, for a change:

HORRIBLE! I’m getting my tubes tied because I SUCK.

I’m not cut out for this. When he cries I want to cover my ears, get in a car and drive away. I want to be alone in a dark room for a month. He makes himself puke now for the rewards of escalation – company, activity, the boredom antidote of bleary-eyed parental bickering. And then he fights and flails and I lose it. I can't stay calm. I'm all buttons. I resent him for it, making me World’s Worst Mother.

I don’t want to be selfless anymore. I want my old tits back. I don't want to be needed by anyone. I want to sleep. I’m at the end of my rope, and he’s pushing me beyond it.

I wasn’t going to post this. But there’s nothing more indulgent and untruthful than constant fair weather.

I’m completely demoralized. I feel like every other mother is better at this than I am. Especially those with more than one, who must be made of tougher stock altogether.

He runs along the beach, shovel in one hand, bucket in the other, yelling NOOO! Nooo! No! No! at the waves, high on uncut self-determination. It would usually make me smile. Not today.

It’s been a dreary few days around here. Not much energy to reflect on the ripest peak and glory of summer. This must be the longest unbroken stretch of miserable posts, ever.. capped by what’s to follow. I’ll brighten up after this: I promise. Time to reflect on what’s lucky and sweet.

It all kicked off on my birthday, when we found and then lost the house of our dreams. I haven’t posted about the whole debacle here... I couldn’t bear to. We’re truly heartbroken. It had a Lunenburg foundry kitchen wood oven, and a field of wildflowers, and original wide plank floors, and the requisite clawfoot tub… more than we ever dared hope to find. We fell head over heels. The seller verbally accepted our offer, then changed her mind, decided to sell to someone else. And that was that.

Since then it’s been a pretty melancholy summer, topped off by rivers of baby puke and radioactive snot. I’ll spare you any further details except to say we’ve finally turned a corner: he’s back and smiling again.

And likewise. Just give me a week of normal sleep.

But where are you, home? I want to enlist someone else to go through this on our behalf, to find the love of our lives, our home.. while we relax outside ourselves, drifting high above the mind-bending mess with fruity, slushy drinks and a comforting detachment.

Where are you? I’ve been dreaming of you a long, long time. Feeling one-half justified, optimistic, sensible, to want to love you; and one-half emotional, romantic, impossible to please, to think of you as anything other than a roof and walls.

I wish finding you didn’t matter to me as much as it does. We’re not wealthy. If we were, this process wouldn’t be so dreadfully impossible.

Where are you? Do you even exist? I’m starting to doubt it.

At 2:30 in the morning on day five of Croupgate, I’ve decided to upgrade. To turn in my son for a newer T-2000 Baby, the updated model with automatic self-snot sucker and built-in serenity button.

He collapses on top of me, perpendicular, after screaming himself to the brink of impending vomitude in the playpen. But once he’s got what he demanded, does he melt dreamily into maternally-inspired bliss? Does he let me spoon him? Do BabyGap photographers tiptoe into the room to capture the moment for their new fall campaign? Alas, no.

His legs turn into tire irons; his arms into baseball bats. And his head into a bowling ball. His squiggling torso serves to flail all of the above into me and my soft bits without mercy. The interlude lasts approximately 45 seconds. One bloody nose and two goose eggs later, we try something else. Anything else. If this happens again tonight, I’m adding scotch to his milk.

Who can do this? With what species of baby (sea sponge, anemone, banana slug)? More importantly, would they be willing to trade? I don’t mean to imply that successful co-sleepers – parents and babies both – must have the temperaments of banana slugs. Or maybe I do. Maybe I envy them for it.

Co-sleeping: Evan and I like the idea, but neither of us can bear the application of it.

This episode: A friend tells me we’re earning our stripes. Justin and I like the idea, but neither of us can bear the application of it.