Today, this heavenly, very hot May 14, is Anna’s due date – but that big boy is staying put for now. I’ll have to blog every day from now on, as so many friends are waiting for news, and if there’s silence here, they’ll assume exciting things are happening on the other side of town. Well, I’m sure they are, but not to my family. Not yet.

Exciting things are happening in Ottawa, though – the re-emergence of my spirited mother. Today she told me that her doctor is so handsome, she’s using lots of Elizabeth Arden cream to repair her face, and she informed him she’d like to write a story about the Ottawa Heart Institute, which she so admires. “My daughter is a writer,” she told him. “She’ll help me.” If Mum is flirting with her doctor, all is well. Life has returned.

Yesterday, a sweet Mother’s Day. Wayson and I went to Factory Theatre to see a marvellous one-man show, “How to Disappear Completely,” written by and starring Itai Erdal, a lighting designer who flew home from Vancouver to Israel when his mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He filmed interviews with this lively, intelligent woman throughout her dying; he shows us film and talks to us about his work with light and about his family. It’s like sitting on an hour long plane ride beside a very interesting, open man who is telling you the truth about his life. Very moving; beautifully done.

When we emerged from Factory onto Adelaide Street, where Wayson had parked his car, we found a huge Portuguese religious parade completely blocking the street – little girls dressed as angels, priests in white, hundreds of the faithful carrying thick white candles and Jesus carried aloft, surrounded by flowers. An elderly woman dressed, of course, all in black, sat in her deckchair at the edge of the road and wept as her Lord went by. Finally, Mr. Choy and I went down the street for coffee; it took an hour before we were able to liberate the car. I found it interesting to be in downtown Toronto and simultaneously in a small Portuguese village, but that kind of faith, particularly as shown by the young people present, I find incomprehensible.

What I do have faith in – my children. Anna and I went to look at baby books, her Mother’s Day present from me – my mum used Spock, I used Penelope Leach, and now there’s some guy called Dr. Sears, recommended by Anna’s midwife. But he’s the guy who espouses “attachment parenting” and “co-sleeping” and provoked the current cover of Time, which both Anna and I find crazy and strange and, frankly, gross. What must the feminist French intellectual Elizabeth Badinter think, she who has just published a book about the tyranny of breast-feeding?

Saying “I turned out all right, didn’t I?”, Anna chose Penelope Leach.

And then we walked, very slowly, to Sam’s restaurant for dinner. He led us to a table on the patio, and as soon as we sat down,  there was a carafe of red wine in front of me and a glass of Coke for her. Now, that’s service. He treated us both to a wonderful dinner. My children are usually a study in contrasts, he a hugely tall blonde beanpole, she short, dark, soft and curvy. But now that at 9 months pregnant she’s rounder than round, the two are truly absurd to imagine as brother and sister.

And yet they are. My body and I know that for a fact.