I'll never forget when my dad was laid off from Eaton's, Canada's famous, family-owned department store. He had been there for most of his working life, steadily working his way up in management roles, garnering respect, good money and six weeks of vacation.

Then Eaton's went bankrupt and my father's career went kaput. Having been laid off twice myself, I can imagine how devastating and demoralising it must've been to start all over again, being the primary source of income for a wife and two kids at home.

But my dad did it. He took short-term, low-paying jobs from family friends and just got on with it. My parents never discussed the state of their finances with us. They protected us from the stress.

I remember when my dad started driving buses. He would have been older than the average driver. He had middle management written all over him. But he enjoyed the change of scene, the lack of office politics.

It wasn't long before he was promoted into an office role, but he's kept that respect he had for the people dealing on the front lines of public transit, and it shows. His drivers adore him. They buy him Christmas presents and respond to the way he treats them: as if they are doing an important job.

Because they are. All the service people in the trenches of society deserve our respect and gratitude for what they do to make our lives easier. For getting us where we need to go.

So reading about these Conservative politicians in Alberta recently laughing at Amarjeet Sohi's former job just angers me and saddens me at the same time. None of us are too good for honest, hard work. It's nothing to snigger over. Maybe these elitist politicians need a dose of reality to remember that.

We made it through that February. We survived a winter ice storm just a month after you were born. Everything was slush-tinted when I looked outside, so I stayed indoors. You wanted to feel the flakes melt into your newborn skin, so you pushed and pulled me through a snow tunnel of postpartum depression. I crawled on my hands and knees, freezing and crying, having forgotten my gloves and coat. Eventually I built an elaborate fort around my heart and waited for the sun to come out.
 
Photographs are supposed to be reproductions of reality, but you can't see the state of my heart in this shot. The way my brain is trying to buffer her birth, her expected-yet-startling existence in my world.
 
She will look at this cute mother-daughter snap in years to come, but she won’t see any of this. It's there, though, hiding beside the leftover Christmas bow in her hair, lurking underneath the neon-yellow surface of her onesie.
 
I see my old trouser-style jeans. My favourite pair, before all the wear and tear. They were a size 8. Single-digit self-approval. They probably hung on me a bit, too, after I unintentionally lost 35 pounds of pregnancy weight in a month. What I wouldn’t give for that happen again, for no reason. Hormones, are you listening?
 
I remember my sister-in-law posting that I looked like you cool, New York hipster mom. She couldn’t see the storm, but it wasn’t all gloom. I probably requested the photo be taken, to have a memento of my motherly pride. I was good at hiding my pain, yes, but glimmers of genuine joy are also visible in that snaggletooth smile.
 
My hair looks more dramatically parted than usual. I didn't have the dreaded post-partum shed that many women experience after giving birth, but it must have thinned enough for me so style it more self-consciously.
 
Something else you can’t see? I haven't peed for about eight hours. My habitually oily skin is also super-dry and flaky—for the first time in forever. I am so dehydrated from the battle of breastfeeding that I am not taking proper care of myself.
 
Photography is not the truth, but its traces are there if you study the image long enough. There is no sound, no movement to distract the eye. It's just a silent record of life, a snapshot of time, ever galloping on to the next flash.
 
Contrast is what makes life interesting. What we see versus what's really happening.
The surface smile versus the inner thoughts. Hope and despair, both are there.
 
I am so happy to be out.
Do we have to go back to that one-bedroom apartment that feels like a prison?
Can't I stay here at my childhood home until I adjust to all this madness?
You’re never too old to want your mother.
I want her now.
When does it get better?