“They say it took hours to get her out,” Justin told me, recounting the details of a car accident this past week on the highway into Halifax. “The other guy walked away, but I doubt he’ll ever be the same. I wouldn’t be.”Everyone was talking about it. Thick fog: a car crosses the centre line, impatient to pass. A head-on collision and a mother of three is gone.

Only a few days later, her husband may come across her shoes in the closet, her grocery list on the counter, leftovers she made in the fridge. Mundane evidence of her remains on standby, as though she’s still on her way home.

“She had a bag of ketchup chips in her lap,” Justin told me, the shaken observation of a fellow firefighter on scene for the first time. And this is what sticks: on the most ordinary of days, you can be gone in a flash. I feel for that father and husband, left to provide strength, soothing and answers to three children when there must be none to be had for himself.

An awareness of mortality settles itself on you with pregnancy, takes root in a dusty corner of your brain despite the most joyous time of your life. Even if it’s fifty years away, you’re a mother now. You’ll never want to be parted from your babies.

Last night Evan woke crying. I whispered in his ear mama love, mama love, and lifted him from his crib onto the bed for diagnostic comfort. But he fell back to sleep as he lay, hair sticking up with heat, flushed with tears and exhaustion, pudgy legs sprawled luxuriously in the breeze of the window.

There is no sight nor scent more delicious. I lay my head on his chest, ear to his heart, and felt his heat on my face in the darkness.

ka-thump
ka-thump
ka-thump

In some ways, I don’t like proof that he’s human. The source of his life so vulnerable, right there under my cheek.

Evan’s delighted wonderment at the world snaps me back from anxiety. Elevator buttons, speaker phones, dogs on a beach. All glorious and magical. We forget that as adults, embroiled in frustration at income tax and a week of rain and never having enough of what we want: time, money, accomplishment. We need to play more. Be in awe more. Roll around on the front lawn more, just because, despite the fact that it’s a cat turd minefield. It’s mostly grass, after all. And what’s laundry for, anyway?

Sad news from the highways makes me want to take a page from Evan’s book more often. Something tells me that our recently departed Blandford mother, who shared with me only a closeted love of ketchup chips, would probably agree.

EVAN: they say
CAN YOU SAY MA MA?

(Muh muh muh muh)
And they clap

EVAN: they say
CAN YOU SAY DA DA?

(Gadiggy diggity diggity duh duh duh)
And they clap

EVAN: they say
WHERE IS DADDY’S NOSE?

And I show them
They never know

(Right THERE silly)
And they clap

Goodledee Goodledee Goodledee Goodledee
Guduh Guduh Guduh
Diggity diggah deediggity diggah
Deeedle deeedle gadeeedle
Goodledee Goodledee Goodledee
Aaaaahem
Gooteh deeesa gooosstee gooot
Tika tika tika tika
Ingledee diggity aaagggh!

(I got KNOCKED OVER by a DOGGY today and I landed in the water and I got all WET and salty and seaweedy and I cried but then I was okay but I was wet so mommy took off my shirt and then I was a BIG BOY because I was at the beach with a bare tummy and a DOGGY and I found ROCKS and some of them had CRITTERS in them and mommy called them periwinkles and I had three of them in my FIST but then we put them away so they would be HAPPY and I was SOOOOO MAD when we had to go but I had SAND in my BUM so we had to go home and I had a SHOWER and it was FUN and THAT’S ALL for now.)

Dinky dinky dinky
at least two or three
no matter where I gotta go
they gotta come with me

All busting out with joy
I chomp my love GRRRRAAAGHH!
But I’m still the favourite boy

I’m all flails and buckles
Mind heads and funny bones
My dinky brass knuckles
Make for ouches, yeowls and groans

Great-grammy thinks I need a barber. Daddy thinks I kick it like Bjorn. Voulez-vous?

Until now, it’s been all SSSHHHHH! and tip-toeing and feeding into oblivion and bathroom fans and whispers. Two bleary adults, positively pickle-bummed at any and all non-silent offenders, a fingertip's grip on sanity being dictated or dashed by one most precious commodity: sleep.

But now, down to only one nap a day as his age requires, it’s all-important to keep him awake until after lunch. We race out in the morning, erranding and driving and visiting and grocerying against the clock to be home by 1 PM. He starts nodding off shortly after noon, and the car, once a powerful tool in the sleep-inducing arsenal, is now a dreaded pre-nap sleep-inducer.

On the way home from the city today, my rear view was of eyes rolling into the back of his head, lolling from side to side. SEE THE TRUCK EVAN? LOOK OUT THE WINDOW! WOW! WE’RE HALFWAY HOME! WE’LL TURN LEFT UP HERE! LOOK AT THE CARS! snapping my fingers and chucking volleys of dinky cars and clacky men and tonka trucks into his lap with Man I Used To Be at top volume.

(If it’s going to be a good three-hour nap, as it should be, it has to start with milk & cuddles and end in the crib. Otherwise it’s mere dozing, which simply doesn’t cut it.)

Sure thing: you get used to the new world order, settling into a routine based on proven assumptions. You know when to hold him, when to walk away and when to run.

Then, just as you’re feeling seasoned, the kid changes planets.

“I’m almost ready,” said Justin the other day to his jaw-dropped wife. “I want another one. Knowing how much he changed us, how happy he made us, I almost want to do it again. Imagine how much more amazing it would be with two!”

And it’s settled: for the next year, I’m sleeping on the couch.

I’m kidding.

No I’m not.

Yes I am.

No I’m not.