Rather, I know why they say it. If you’re a vet, you probably see mostly sick animals, and when they’re really sick, death is a saving grace to the pain which is your vision of that animal’s normal. If someone’s cat was hit by a car, of course you wouldn’t say “It was for the best.” When your cat gets a sudden illness, or even a less sudden illness, it is one long car accident, culminating in death. When it’s over, and you’re stroking the fur of what used to be your cat, you are still reeling from coming home to find her wheezing and lethargic, barely able to move and not interested in tuna. When the vet says “It’s for the best,” you are still thinking of uneaten tuna.

“It’s for the best” is like a slap, but a slow slap, that you can see coming.

It brings up those secret worries about snowballing vet bills. Googling “hepatitis” and the dismay at complicated and expensive long term treatment on top of the twice a day insulin injections and hepatitis has a different special diet than diabetes and there will probably be more urine and vomit and blood and probably diarrhea to clean up now. In the end you conclude she’s worth it, but when the vet says, “It’s for the best,” that little part of you that was tallying up the logistics of animal illness slinks lower down inside you, hunched with guilt.

Chyna (pronounced Chee-nuh) was probably about 8.

Back when Matt was still living in his own apartment, I had a project using a little piece poster board. The rest of the poster board I folded in half, into a rough Teepee shape and wrote “cat house” on the side. To my delight, Chyna ran right over it and proceeded to camp out. She played in that paper Teepee for weeks as it lost it’s shape sliding wider and lower, and she had to crawl on her belly to get underneath.

A pair of freshly ironed pants once attacked her, and she was afraid of pants for the next several months.

She liked to attack dust, or towels or toes under doors.

If you made the mistake of scratching your leg beneath a blanket, Chyna was there to help you SCRATCH harder. Then when you jerked your hand out from under the blanket she perked up and said, “pet me?” with her eyes.

Her meow sounded surprisingly like the word “hello” and I’d always meant to record it, but never got around to it.

She liked to carry toys in her mouth and meow around them, and often meowed in the darker corners of the house, as though she was exploring. If we called out to her, she we glance at us, then continue her expedition. Hello? Hello?

A few years ago we adopted Tricky, and Chyna, though she was eventually happier for the company, started binge eating to keep the new cat from getting her food. She slowly gained weight and started slowing down, acting old. About a year and a half ago, we found out she had diabetes, and almost as soon as we started treatment, she started acting like a kitten again, and was more loving and social than ever. The new house was likewise good for her, with more spaces, more places to climb, more perches, and spaces to crouch beneath.
With some cats it seems like the only time they come near you is when they want to be fed or they want to be pet, but Chyna would follow you around to see what you were up to. If your lap was full, she would curl up by your leg, or if it was too hot, she’d curl up a few inches away, purring and clearly just happy to be near you. Her favorite place in the world was the bathroom, and the first time she tried to jump on Matt’s lap he was in the bathroom and he was, shall we say, unprepared for a lap cat.

When Ender came into the picture, Chyna was the first cat to sniff him (though she’s also been the smarter cat in terms of keeping out of reach as he starts to grab for furry things) and when he cried she would meow at us in evident concern that we weren’t taking care of him fast enough. One of our friends brought a toddler to the house, and when we weren’t watching closely enough, she picked up Chyna around the middle, and carried her into the room, arms and legs sticking awkwardly out in front. Chyna didn’t try to scratch or bite the little girl, she just looked at us and meowed pitifully as if to say, “can you do something about this please?” I really hoped we would get a few years of trying to stop Ender chasing her around before we would have to say goodbye.

Whenever we got home from a trip, or even a long day of errands, Chyna would be sitting at the french doors, looking out for us. As we got out of the car, she would stand up expectantly, and we could see her mouth opening to meow at us.

Hello?

Hello?

Matt and I debated about giving Ender such a loaded nickname. Forget the fact that Ender Wiggin killed two children (in self defense) before he was 12, and forget that he unknowingly committed mass xenocide. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a summary of Ender’s Game should help.)

Ignoring all of the acts he was tricked or pushed into committing, there’s still the problem of (the character) Ender’s own experience: his childhood didn’t exist, and once “freed” from the training of killing buggers he spent the rest of his life trying to absolve himself of the guilt of that war. He is never at any kind of peace until he marries Novinha on Lusitania some… 3000(?) years later, and that is a half-peace, under shared guilt and the weight of disaster.

It’s not something anyone would wish on a child, and names are nothing if not wishes for our children. Look at the most common meanings of names: beautiful, lucky, joyous, strong.

Except the character of Ender is not just the sum of his actions and experiences. He’s the most compassionate bad-ass imaginable. Oh, and a genius besides. And everyone he comes in contact with can’t help but love him. These are far from bad things, even if they are the very traits that get him into Battle School, and more importantly, the traits that pushed him to the top of Battle School, and ultimately made him responsible for winning the Bugger war.

We played with other nicknames. When I talked to him while I was pregnant, I usually called him “Ollie.” It’s funny, it seemed automatic at the time, but now Ollie is a totally different being: Ollie was the fetus and I can’t imagine this baby being anyone but Ender. Of course he could decide he hates it when he gets older, but fortunately Olivander lends itself to all sorts of nicknames. These days I’ve given up on telling people Ender is “short for” Olivander, because generally it just confuses them.

Matt and I both loved the name Olivander, but we weren’t settled on it. I’d thought of the name Ender independently, but wanted to give our baby a name with some meaning aside from a literary character, and Ender, as far as I know, has no meaning beyond the literal “one who ends,” which is not the most auspicious of meanings for a baby. As a nickname though, it’s an entirely different matter.

We were listening to the audiobook of Ender’s Game, and all its sequels, on a series of long trips. Matt had read Ender’s Game before, but not recently enough to remember it. I’ve read it so often I have bits memorized (which isn’t actually unusual… that is true of many of my books).  As we got to the end of one of the books, Matt said, “couldn’t we name him Ender?” He was half joking. I grinned at him and pointed out that if Ender could be a nickname for Andrew, surely it could be a nickname for Olivander. I think we were pretty much decided after that.

When you think about it, any interesting literary character probably didn’t have a wonderful time of it- otherwise they wouldn’t be interesting. Misery and conflict is what makes a story. If we have a wish for our children, it would be boredom, and if naming our children were granting wishes, we would never name them for literary characters. No one wants their children to have adventures.

Naming isn’t wishgranting though, it’s giving. And if we are giving Ender anything from the character Ender, I hope it’s a taste of future, of things that seem impossible, of everyday beauty and love. Maybe the knowledge that nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and a bit of healthy distrust for authority. Independence but not loneliness, responsibility but not guilt. And especially a sense of open possibility.

Mostly though, we named him Ender, because it’s awesome. We can only hope he thinks so too.

We are nerds. Of varying degrees and types, but everyone I spend any degree of time with is a nerd. So Star Wars is always a hit, and as it happened, I got to use the onesie for my own baby. It got me thinking though, watching him roll around in his Jedi shirt.

Maybe it’s just the hormones. Maybe it’s paranoia. These days, I swerve between absolute joy, and horror at the possibility of loss of any kind(with bouts of boredom and exhaustion thrown in for good measure).

So, as much as anyone might wish to banish the prequels from existence (and I don’t, I’d keep them if only for the light-sabre battles), I kept thinking about Yoda declaring 9 year old Anakin Skywalker too old for the training.

When DO children start training at the Jedi Temple? 8 and a half? 6? 3? Infancy? I suspect the (fictional) answer is around 4 or 5, much as you might see of young athletes being taken for training in some places. Or, you know, Battle School.

Battle School isn’t a bad parallel. You have this child, who has in all likelihood been remarkable since he or she was a baby. Not to say that people would love their gifted children more than typical children, but a precocious toddler probably has a little extra sparkle and charm.

And then your baby tests too high on the midichlorian scale and your life is just ripped apart. You get those fuzzy bright – too sweet years, and then you don’t see them until they’re vague and peaceful calm as Obi Wan. Does anyone refuse? You leave this beautiful bright four year old to meet his destiny and 20 years later, he’s a stranger who has seen more of the universe than you’re capable of imagining. Maybe all parenting is kind of like that.

But maybe it’s not like that at all. Maybe the four year old isn’t so much adorably brilliant as he is frustratingly advanced. Maybe he constantly pushes against your artificial boundaries, ready to cross them long before you are ready to let him. Maybe all parenting is kind of like that too. But this little child doesn’t just cause trouble in school when he’s bored, he levitates, and talks his teachers into letting him have extra recess. Every day. Maybe if hadn’t been found by the Jedi, he would have been lost on a path of drugs, crime and force lightning.

And maybe you don’t have to just hand him over to the priesthood, maybe that was just unique to Anakin’s circumstances, what with Mom being a slave. I mean, obviously it’s a boarding school, I doubt they have Jedi-letts who commute, but maybe they have parents weekends every couple months. Maybe the little ones put down their training sabres and pack up for a long holiday over Thanksgiving. Maybe they make paper planets with heart stickers and glitter for Mother’s Day.

Then there’s sure to be at least a few families who moved to Coruscant to be near their Jedi tots. In fact some probably even moved to Coruscant just in hopes that their child would be accepted. They probably used special belly-headphones to play special force channeling soundtracks for the fetus. When the baby turned 18 months, they enrolled him in a class that claims to raise midichlorian levels, satisfaction guaranteed.

Do the parents ever hang out watching light-sabre kata practice? Does Dad pick his Jedi up from a match with a younger but more talented boy and scold him for not triple flipping into the opening he saw two and a quarter minutes in, or what about a little force nudge when the kid blinked sweat out of his eyes a minute later? Does Mom observe her daughter meditating and tell her maybe she needs to work a little harder at it since she always seems to need to itch her nose after only a few hours?

Why do I assume the Jedi parents would be overbearing and… awful?

I guess it’s because I know (however it is you can know something about a fictional universe) that there is no room for parents in the world of the Jedi. Parents are distracting, they are attachment, they turn Anakins into Darth Vaders.

If it’s genetics (and Luke says it is) most parents of Jedi must have had some feel for the force as well. Probably they wouldn’t have turned into Toddlers & Tiaras type psychos, they would have been sensitive, aware of nuances, feeling the subtle needs of their baby. They would have been there with a hug when the training was too difficult, they would have felt the pain of struggle, of the alienation that must be necessary to finally attain a detached calm. And the hugs might keep the student from struggling through, from learning what needed to be learned.

Was a Jedi ever allowed to be a child? Did they have time for games and giggling and stupid stunts, or was it all concentration and breathing?

The Jedi. The Jedi’s father. The athlete and her parents. Theresa and John Paul and Ender Wiggin, Mr. and Mrs. Madrid. The parent of every real world soldier, alive and slain. They give so much, and we expect it all of them. Was it worth it? What they missed, what they lost?

To be a Jedi?

For most new parents, the biggest clue that their baby is growing is how quickly they outgrow their clothes. In my case, I thought I could feel Ender seeming larger in my arms, taking up more of my chest as we cuddled. The clothes came after.

He was 10 lb 4 oz at his 1 month check up, which is almost a pound a week. He went from just under 50th percentile for weight and length to 75% and 85%.

This probably explains why he does nothing but eat for hours on end.

I guess it’s called cluster feeding, and it’s pretty obnoxious, but it is both rewarding and exciting to watch him grow so rapidly. He outgrew the newborn clothes almost immediately, and now my favorite set of PJs, which looked five sizes too large when we first dressed him in them, are officially too small. I am dressing him entirely in 3-6 month clothes now, before I even got a chance to dress him in all the 0-3 onesies on his shelf.

Many mothers find it hard when their babies outgrow their first set of clothes, but I love seeing the proof that he’s growing and that I’m making enough food for him. Maybe I’ll get the weepy fit when I get the time to actually pack away the baby clothes he only wore for a few weeks.

I think part of the reason everyone sees Ender as small is because of his hair. His hair makes him look so much older than the newborn he is, when he cries it’s easy to picture him as a toddler throwing a tantrum. He has a pretty bad case of baby acne, but the spots across his nose look almost like freckles, and with his sweet cowlick, he looks just like one of the little rascals with a disproportionately large head. He looks just a bit more like a child than a baby.

Ender is a relatively easy baby. At night he sleeps in three hour chunks, and every once in a while graces us with a five hour stretch. I’m told he doesn’t cry as much as most newborns, but he still demands to be held and cuddled for most of the day, usually allowing me one two hour window where I can get set him up with the monitor and get some work done around the house.

Probably the coolest (and the most challenging) part of him getting older is how much more time he spends awake now.

He doesn’t like me to pump milk, because he can smell it and knows it’s not going right into his mouth, where it belongs. I think his baby brain has a very simple equation: “I’m awake” + “I smell milk” = “I must be hungry.” Only recently does he have some waking times during the day where I can hold him without him demanding that I feed him.

I have to admit I sometimes delay feeding him for a minute or two, just because he’s so hilariously cute when he’s hungry.

Much like a cat, Ender seems to be most alert when he wants food. Babies do this thing called rooting, where they move their mouth around trying to get a nipple, but when Ender does it, this means bobbing his whole head back and forth like a bird searching for seed. He pants and makes this “uh! uh!” noise that goes with it, and the first time he did it in the hospital I laughed so hard he shook on my chest.

He’s very easygoing, but I can’t help but think of him as a little cranky.

He never smiles, because he’s not yet old enough to smile, and since I’m used to older babies, emotionally I think this means he’s grumpy. He has been more fussy than usual the last week or so, but since week 6 is supposed to be the peak in endless crying, I’m pretty sure he’s actually showing us a pretty laid back personality. He really only cries when he’s hungry or gassy. Occasionally, when his “I’m awake!” period lines up with Matt and my “time to sleep” period, he’ll start fussing because we’ve tried to put him to bed, and he’s bored. We’re working on getting a mobile set up in our room over the pack’n'play in hopes that it will keep him interested and lull him to sleep.

He really is hungry all the time. When he’s at top appetite, he’ll try to eat anyone and everyone that comes near his path, but when I’m holding him, he zeros in on my nipples immediately, even through a shirt and a padded nursing bra.

I do love the moments, even though it sometimes means I get a little less sleep, where he’s fussing and furious in the crib until I pick him up… and miracle of miracles, he isn’t hungry. Instead he lays his head against my chest and settles immediately.

I know that right now, as far as Ender is concerned, his dad and I are just warm bodies, and pretty much anyone would do just as well for a cuddle buddy, but it’s still heart melting. Matt and I don’t co-sleep because it would take way too much to change our bed to a baby-safe environment. Also we’d like to give Ender a younger sibling sometime in the next few years, which means we’ll need the bed to ourselves at least once. But when Ender snuggles up against you, it’s easy to understand how people who plan not to co-sleep end up with a “family bed.”

Parenting, obviously, is full of adjustments. Depression runs in my family so even before we started trying for a baby Matt and I knew to be on the look out for postpartum depression, but so far, I’ve been just fine. Or as fine as any new parent, staying at home with an infant for the first time, can be expected to be. I have had a few breakdown moments, where I felt completely incapable and horrified at the thought of being stuck with all this new responsibility for a couple decades or longer. Each of these breakdowns though has had much more to do with sleep deprivation than real depression. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine the rest of the time, but my negative feelings are temporary resignation at being so static, pinned under a small tyrant.

It’s helped that we’ve made it a point to not be shut-ins from very early on.

My brother’s wedding was only a few weeks after Ender’s birth and it was an outdoor wedding with the best weather anyone could hope for in a Cleveland June wedding. It was perfect for us as well, slightly overcast evening so we weren’t terribly worried about the temperature or the sun.

I did try to pick up a sunhat for Ender, along with a cute outfit for the wedding, but although he fits 3-6 month clothes, he does NOT fit 3-6 month hats, and for whatever reason, they didn’t have any hats for a younger baby.

Fortunately it was pretty shady at the wedding, which was held in my brother’s (and his wife’s) back yard.

We’ve been back twice since for evening bonfires and potlucks, and since I’m generally a pretty anti-social creature, I’ve actually had more social interaction the last month than I did before having the baby. He’s so small, and his needs are so primitive, that for now he actually allows us quite a lot of freedom, so long as we have the energy to exercise it.

We’ve been out to restaurants with friends a few times. For the most part, Ender is quiet at restaurants, we shove his car seat into the back of a booth and give him a bottle if he gets hungry.

Sometimes he gets fussy, but he’s little enough that the looks people give us are still of the “aww… how sweet!” variety rather than the, “why can’t you control your brat” type.

He had his first real bath only a few weeks ago, in an infant-toddler plastic whale tub (actually a very clever design- much better than the detachable sling/hammock things that most tubs use for infants which just look kind of gross).

He also outgrew the infant insert for his carseat, which shifted him from slowly enormous looking, to suddenly tiny again. It’s been utterly strange to look back at photos from a few weeks ago and be able to see a noticeable difference both in his face and his size.

For me, the weirdest transformations haven’t been in Ender, which I expected, but in myself, and in Matt.

We took a trip out to PA to visit family a couple weekends ago, Ender’s first long trip. We planned on stopping frequently to give Ender breaks from the carseat, and ended up taking two days on the way out rather than our normal 6 hour drive.

We stopped at places like Bob Evans and Perkins, where we knew Matt and I could get a decent meal while giving Ender his bottle. Side note: the booths at Bob Evans are just a little too small to comfortably feed a baby.

It was strange for me, to hear Matt request a table for three. Every hostess or waitress looked down at Ender to evaluate whether he was old enough to need his own menu, and while most were bright enough to realize, no he’s not even old enough to try and eat the crayons much less color with them, just the fact that they had to look at him and judge reminded me that we now have this new real whole person in our lives.

Ender was fairly fussy at the stops, and so I spent much of the time between bites of my food standing and rocking him, trying to keep him from bothering the other customers.

Most people weren’t bothered, they just smiled at me and went on. The way they looked at me surprised me, because I realized they looked at me and saw a mother, they looked at us and saw a family of three. I wanted to tell them all that I’ve only had this beautiful boy for a month and that this is a new role. I don’t yet know that’s me.

Warning: many bodily fluids described ahead. If you aren’t interested in reading about the birth, skip the bulk of the text here for photos below.

My water broke at 4:30 am on Tuesday. I had been feeling little trickles for about half an hour, but kept saying, no, it’s NOT my water, until finally I decided to get up and use the restroom and WHOOSH, just like in the movies. Ender wasn’t due until June 11, and with a half constructed changing table, giant boxes waiting to be broken down and removed, and all sorts of pre-baby chaos in the house, Matt and I were hoping for just a LITTLE more time, but just as everyone who took a look at my giant belly predicted, Ender came a little early.

If you want to see a sleeping man leap straight to a standing position, “damnit, my water broke” are apparently magic words. Actually, a week later, Matt is still a little jumpy whenever I say the word “water” in the bedroom.

Though we’d been warned in our childbirth class that when the water breaks it doesn’t just stop… I wasn’t fully prepared for the fact that it just. kept. coming. I called my midwife Colleen from the bathroom and left a message with her answering service, then texted my doula Kim, and our friend Willow who is thinking of becoming a midwife or doula and who we had invited to attend the birth. Irregular contractions started shortly after my water broke, but they were so mild I wasn’t sure that’s what they were. I called the midwife again a couple hours later when I didn’t hear anything (she was sort of busy in another labor).

We put a towel down on the bed and Matt and I took a nap, figuring the easy part of labor would take a while, and we ought to get some rest while we could. Shockingly, we both managed to get a couple hours of sleep in.

When I woke up contractions had stopped entirely. We heard back from Colleen’s office around 10 or 11 I think. I was told that normally they’d recommend I stay at home and labor there as long as possible to avoid ending up with Pitocin, but because I was group B Strep positive and had ruptured membranes (water broken)  they wanted to get me in to be checked and figure out what to do from there.

On the car ride over to Colleen’s office, contractions had restarted, were consistently 5 minutes apart and irritating but still not especially painful. I had a couple more painful contractions walking to the office, and then once I was set up on the table to be checked, they stopped entirely again. I found this confusing, but I guess that’s all pretty normal. I was at 3 cm, so Colleen recommended Matt and I go to the nearby mall (air conditioning) and walk around for an hour or so, to try and get things going. I think this was around noon, but I’m not entirely sure. She asked us to call and check in at 4 (pm) and I assume at the point we would have needed to start talking induction.

As soon as we started walking, contractions started again, and they became more painful, though still tolerable. I was a little worried about how bad they’d get though, because they seemed to be almost entirely in my back, and I’ve not heard warm fuzzy things about back labor.

By about 2, contractions were getting to be less what I would call tolerable. We wanted to get a meal in me before starting what we figured would be a loooong day(s), so we drove to Liquid Planet for a smoothie and a pita. I didn’t manage to eat much. We left after fifteen minutes or so to go to the hospital, where I was pre-registered.

I should probably explain here, that I was trying to go for an unmediated birth. This is not for any philosophical reasons, it’s for phobia reasons: I hate needles. Pregnancy HAS actually reduced this fear considerably, along with years of annual flu shots and now, weekly to twice monthly allergy injections (2 in each arm), but the idea of a GIANT NEEDLE in my spine freaked me out, and I was way more afraid of that than the pain, so epidural was the course of last resort. I’d requested the holistic birthing suite. It’s a recently added labor room with a large jacuzzi bath for laboring and is generally set up for natural birth. That room was already occupied however, so we were put in a different room with a big baby pool instead. All the birthing rooms at St. Johns are private, so I didn’t really mind.

Colleen was still in another birth (I think a different one, apparently May has been insane for births) so the nurse set me up on a fluid IV until she could get a script for the antibiotics (for the GBS). They wanted to get me two doses before the birth. I think I threw a wrench in the works here… I’d forgotten to mention an amoxacillin resistance. They always ask about allergies… but resistance just means it stops working, and so I never thought to mention it. It was lucky I was reading about GBS treatment a few days earlier and saw that the normal treatment is penicillin. So I think it took longer than expected to get me sorted with antibiotics, and as a result I was laying in bed for a couple hours with a fluid IV and increasingly bad back labor. The nurse who set me up was very sweet and, reading my needle phobia, got my blood draw done at the same time as the IV poke (not exactly sure how that works).

At this point no one really knew how far along I was, because the plan had been to wait for Colleen to check me to avoid extra risk of infection from lots of checks, and Colleen was still caught up in labor. I hadn’t called Kim (doula) or Willow (trainee doula) yet, because the idea is to wait until active labor, and everyone figured I should wait to hear how far along I was. I knew I was in pain, but since I had no idea how BAD the pain would get, I wasn’t sure. When Colleen arrived, she took one look at me and said we should get me up and moving. She was a little surprised that I was still on an IV instead of just the heplock, and got the antibiotics truck rolling so I could be a little more mobil. Colleen suggested I move to the toilet in the meantime, which I found pretty gross, but the change in position did seem to help for a while. She also said yes, for the love of all that is holy or unholy, call the doulas (she may not have put it like that, I think my pain was starting to translate language in interesting ways). I was only at 4cm, which probably should have been discouraging, but Colleen made it sound like good progress.

Both Doulas were on the way, but I think I was still on the toilet when I said, get me some drugs, PLEASE. I had been mildly freaked at having a heplock, though mostly distracted by contractions, but at this point I was wholly thankful to have it, as it made the nubain that much easier to get into my blood.

Can I just say, nubain is awesome? I moved from the toilet to the rocker and the contractions still hurt, but I didn’t care that it hurt. I LOVED the nubain. The nurse said, “Oh yeah, you’re high,” and I said, “YES I am.” Anyway.

Kim and Willow showed up at around the same time, with me still flying but the pain sharpening through the drugs. When I started to have a hard time again, Kim got me up from the rocker, and had me kneel, leaning on a birthing ball. This helped some, but not enough. What DID help was the pressure Kim applied to my lower back. I think she showed Matt and Willow how to do this as well, but I was starting to lose track of who was doing what at this point.

For some reason they want you at 5 cm before you can use the birthing tub, but my pain levels were rising rapidly, and the second dose of nubain didn’t help for nearly as long as the first. I started to talk about an epidural, but Kim suggested I get checked to see if I was far enough along to use the tub. So we did that.

I don’t think anyone expected me to be further along than 5 cm, but I was at 7. They started filling the tub, and I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I had a pretty good idea about how the rest of the night was going to go.

I think I was progressing faster than people thought I was. Colleen had predicted (out of my earshot) a baby sometime after breakfast. First time labors aren’t supposed to move all that fast, but the pain seemed to be escalating fast… I had a feeling if I got in the tub I’d lose my window for an epidural by the time I needed one. In the end I figured I’d give it a try, and if it didn’t help enough, I’d get the epidural.

It did help, a lot, especially with water on my back and Matt stroking my hair. It ended up working out really well for me that the birthing suite was occupied: the baby pool used as a replacement was padded everywhere so I could move around without fighting hard surfaces. The walls were like vinyl couches.

Everything still hurt more than I felt I could cope with. At this point everything goes from kind of blurry to almost blank in my memory. I think I went into transition almost as soon as I got into the tub. It was horrific. It’s as close as I’ve come to crying from pain in my adult life. Friends had told us that the screaming you see on TV is unrealistic, but let me tell you, I am a screamer. Also a curser, though I’d like to point out that  my swearing wasn’t directed at anyone, and I don’t believe I ever resorted to screaming, “you did this to me,” at Matt.

I think the only reason I didn’t say, “that’s it, get me the epidural,” is that I sort of zonked out in the short peace between contractions and couldn’t focus long enough to say anything.

I have no idea how long transition lasted. At some point I started feeling “pushy” and when I mentioned it Kim and the nurse said to go ahead and push. Colleen wasn’t around at that point, I think she was nap-recovering in another room from her back to back deliveries, so I started pushing halfheartedly, not really sure.

I think at this point I managed to vocalize that I wanted an epidural if it wasn’t too late. I was pretty sure it was too late, so I wasn’t too crushed when they got me out of the tub to check me and announced I was fully dilated, and someone ran to get Colleen.

Kim kept saying, “push through the pain,” and eventually I realized that pushing actually made the pain of the contraction LESS and I started pushing with a lot more enthusiasm. They asked me if wanted to get back in the tub, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have the energy/coordination/balance to get back in, much less back OUT again, and I did not want to deliver in the water, so we continued in bed. I don’t remember when Colleen got there, or when they added the birthing bar, and when I look at the nurse in the photos, I don’t even recognize her (there were a couple shift changes while I was in labor).

The pushing actually hurt much less than transition. It was incredibly HARD, but such a relief to be in less pain that I was able to joke around a bit with everyone in between contractions. There was still considerable pain, I was still yelling and cursing, but it was more about the exertion than the agony. Colleen was awesome about explaining that the almost unbearable pressure/pain/stretching at the end of each contraction let me stretch more slowly. Kim managed to get me to relax between and prepare for the next. For the most part, I think pushing was within my coping range, but it was probably the most physically taxing thing I’ve ever had to do.

At first pushing was fairly productive, according to Matt, Kim and Willow you could physically SEE the difference as Ender moved down. One of the few times I opened my eyes, I glanced down and was startled at how flat my belly was. Progress seemed to stall right at the end though, and everyone kept telling me I needed to push harder/more.   I didn’t exactly have more to put into it. Eventually Colleen said if we didn’t get him out soon she’d need to do an episiotomy or get the vacuum. She was actually numbing me up for the an episiotomy which got me a bit panicky (the needles, not the thought of cutting which I wasn’t thrilled about either) but I finally managed to get him out in the next push.

Before, they kept talking about how he would “pop” out once he got over that edge, and that’s really what it felt like.

I actually thought Colleen had bopped him on the head to somehow get him to jump out (it didn’t make any more sense in my head to be honest) and then there was this wiggly mass of baby on the bed. Matt was supposed to get to hold him first, but the umbilical cord wasn’t quite long enough for that, so they put him on my chest. He was sort of greyish blue, which really worried me while they were suctioning out his lungs. The first of many freakouts in parenting, I realize. I’m pretty sure it was only a matter of seconds before they cleared his lungs and he started screaming in earnest, but it felt like quite a lot longer. He pinked up pretty soon once they got him crying, though his feet and hands stayed purplish for a bit.

I literally do not remember ever seeing that nurse. I was pretty content to just stare at Ender, though I think it took about a day for the real awe to set in.

The name Olivander doesn’t have any special significance for our family, we found it in a baby name book, and both quite liked it. We figured it’s nice and unique without being so weird sounding that he’ll get teased or be embarrassed. I have no idea what the “right” way to pronounce it is, but we’re saying it like a mash-up of Oliver and Alexander.

Olivander means “protector of the olive tree”  which we thought was kind of cool. As a side note, Oliver means “olive tree” but it can also mean “elf army,” which is sort of awesome. We did NOT get the name Olivander from Harry Potter, though one of the characters is named Mr. Ollivander, and I’m sure people will assume that no matter what we say. Ah well.

Ender is a character from a favorite sci-fi book, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. We figure if he doesn’t like that nickname when get gets older, he can always go by Ollie or Van or even Oliver. Olivander is the name I used while he was in the womb, and Ender seems like a different creature than the imaginary baby I carried around for nine months. To us he looks like an Ender.

Willow was our wedding photographer, and she took most of the photos during the birth, as well as keeping me stocked in ice chips (love ice chips) and probably helping out in lots of other ways that I was too busy to notice. She also took a flipbook worth of photos of Ender crowning, which I will not be sharing, and which make me wince. Lots. I have a second degree tear, which I’d hoped to avoid, but I realize in terms of tearing it could be much worse.

Of course, every minute of the pain was worth it, but I wouldn’t say it was necessary. I wasn’t sure where my needle fear would balance with pain tolerance, and now I know: next time I’m getting the epidural.

It’s interesting to me that some of the people who set out to have a natural birth say they’re doing it that way because they want to be “present” for the birth, to be aware of the whole experience. For myself, I think I would have been much more aware and present had I had less pain. I think I would have been mentally defeated pretty early on without the nubain and the support of both my husband and doula(s). Transition was impossible, and I kept repeating, “I don’t want to,” because I realized, “I can’t,” was pretty much unhelpful and, frankly, untrue as evidenced by human history. The only real upside I can about the pain is that it made the pushing phase seem tolerable by comparison, but even with that, I think I may have had more energy for it if I hadn’t been so spent by transition.

I am glad it went the way it went. I am also glad it’s over.

The next morning:

Look at me, wearing clothes. That didn’t happen much while at the hospital, they aren’t kidding when they say modesty flies out the door.

Holding him is incredible. I can’t believe how soft he is.

With our insurance we get two days at the hospital from time of birth, and since Ender was kind enough to be born just after midnight, it was closer to three days, which made me feel much more secure about the whole healthy newborn thing, especially since my labor was fairly short- they only had time to give me one dose of antibiotics for the GBS.

I kept asking people if his nose looked yellow, but they periodically tested his bilirubin levels (the way they measure jaundice) and they were fine… right up until the point that they jumped up to not fine. I think that was sometime late Thursday, and unfortunately they weren’t able to get a blood test on him until Friday, when we were supposed to be discharged.

The levels were high enough that they told us he needed to stay another night… and under the UV lamps the whole time.

That was tough news… one of the things we loved about the hospital was that we had the option of keeping him with us the whole time we were there, and the UV lamps meant our time with him was limited to half hour feedings every three hours.

There were a few upsides to this though. The first one was that they wanted to supplement my milk with a little formula after each feeding to make sure he was getting enough (and flushing out his system). This gave Matt and opportunity to feed Ender, which he wouldn’t have had otherwise since everyone says don’t introduce a bottle until 4 weeks etc, etc.

Probably the biggest upside of being separated from him is that, as much as it sucked, it gave us a chance to sleep in solid 3 hour blocks. The last two nights had been disrupted by every little sound he made, every big sound he made, as we struggled to figure out how to get him to sleep, and the frequent checks by nurses on both his and my health. The third day, where I was technically discharged from the hospital (we stayed on as “boarders” at no cost) there were no checkups, and no fussing, but we still had access to lactation consultants and knew our baby was being taken care of. So even though it was emotionally rough, we both felt much better for the extra rest and support the next day, and I think we went home from the hospital much more recovered than most people do. We had to continue to monitor Ender’s bilirubin levels, and today they finally went down on their own. He’s still a tiny bit fake-tan looking, but he’s beautiful anyway and with any luck his color will return completely to normal over the next day or so.

Of course the final benefit was that being away from him made us appreciate being with him, and gave us an extra drop of patience for the next week of sleep deprivation. It’s anyone’s guess how long that will last, but for now, we’re all three feeling pretty good.

I’ll try to post more photos later this week.

Resignation. I ran a gloved hand around the frame of my car door, relieved when the snow flaked off, no coat of ice lurking beneath. At least it would clear off easily. I sat down, legs outside, put my keys in the ignition. And looked up as my snow-cave car brightened in sunlight.

The man from the other car had wiped his snow-brush, the size of a janitor’s broom, across my front window. Another quick stroke cleared the snow from my back window and that awkward triangle back back window. I grinned at him. In five seconds he had spared me five minutes cold work. “Thanks!” I yelled through the glass.

He gestured with the brush. “Close your door!” Then he quickly cleared off the rest of my car while I sat comfortable and happily bemused. When he finished, he opened the passenger door, peered in, and said, “You have a NICE day.”

Undoubtedly.

Weeks or months ago: just before the downpour started I realized my front tire was flat. Found my jack missing, called AAA, got the spare on. The spare was also flat, but fortunately, not all the way.

I drove slowly and neurotically to the gas station and realized I wasn’t sure how to use the air pump. I pulled out my phone and texted my husband for advice.

Meanwhile I climbed out of the car and compared the air tube to my tire with some puzzlement. I noticed the tag on my tire with psi recommendations just before Matt texted me to look on my tire for psi recommendations.

Perhaps 45 seconds had passed from the time I parked my car when another car drove toward me. Before he even came to a stop, he leaned on the horn.

At first I thought he must be honking at someone else. I made the universal “what?” sign with my hands and shoulders. I glanced back at at the air tube, almost defensively. I wasn’t sure how to use the psi recommendation since I didn’t have a tire pressure gauge.

The man climbed out of his car. He was redfaced and breathless with rage. “Are you going to use it or talk on your phone!?”

Anger prompted anger, but I did my best to stay calm. “Well I’m trying to figure out how to use this,” I tried to explain. “I’ve never had a flat tire before.”

He shouted over me. “Are you going to use that? So why are you playing on your phone!?”

“I’m talking to my husband, he’s helping me-”

“Why are you blocking the air pump while you talk on your phone!”

Finally I gave up and yelled back. “My husband is telling me how to use the air through the phone! Why don’t you back off so I can use it?”

He glared at me, purple now. “A PHONE won’t help you do that!” He drove off.

My car was in front of the air pump for a total of five minutes. Most of that was yelling: once the man left I took about a minute to figure out how to insert the air tube and took a guess at tire pressure. After I saw the flat, it took me 20 minutes (in the rain) to admit I couldn’t find the jack, 45 minutes for AAA to get there, and another 15 minutes (in the POURING rain) to get the spare on.

I missed a doctor’s appointment, hoped I wouldn’t need to cancel my hair cut, and stressed about having to buy new tires, but even damp and rushed, I wasn’t in a bad mood until that self important jerk started screaming at me.

Small gestures, kind or mean, can have an incredible impact. When I was a kid in a Catholic school we had “Random Acts of Kindness” week. It was beyond lame. An obvious shortcoming was that orchestrating something like that sort of negates the whole “random” aspect. The suggestions were stupid and forced, the whole process brought with it a cumbersome self consciousness.

I can see now though, the hopeful mind behind it. When I feel the flush of happiness caused by something so simple, (or the fury caused by a minute of thoughtlessness) it’s easy to believe the world can be changed in small, slow pushes. I remember the movie “Pay it Forward.” It was an interesting concept, but honestly a bit unbelievable. The problem with “pay it forward” as the Sixth Sense kid imagined it is that it depends on such large acts. The movie implied that you have to give an awful lot to get anywhere, but I don’t think that’s true.

Maybe the things we do for (and to) people, the things that could change the world, can be so tiny we hardly realize we’re doing them. As small as yelling, as brushing off some snow, a snide comment or a compliment. Maybe the cascade will be so slow we won’t see the effects in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean they go nowhere. Every day we change the world.

*domino photo from Malkav

Part of the lead up to Halloween of course involves not only costume shopping, but generally trolling (hah) among halloween stores to see what beauties they’ve come up with this year. I choose to pretend the travesty of inflatable decorations do not exist, but otherwise, most Halloween decorations can’t be to cheesily spooky for my taste. Motion activated hand in a bowl, fake flaming cauldrons, strobe lights, it’s ALL good.

You can usually get a good dose of Halloween gloom at craft stores and fabric stores. Novelty stores like Hot Topic, Spencers, and their smaller counterparts are always good for some unique creepy items. Of course the big box stores like Walmart and Target usually dedicate a decent sized section to “seasonal” items.

For the most pleasantly overwhelming experience though, the best source is a dedicated Halloween store. The quality of these stores varies, but you’re pretty much assured to be surrounded by grey, black and orange props, often extensively enough to spend hours giggling over fake corpses and daggers.

Even in the “higher end” versions of these stores you’ll be hard pressed to find anything not made of plastic, they tend not to have anything particularly fine, but that’s really not the point. While a store full of Christmas decorations can probably cause a tinsel seisure, oversaturation of Halloween decorations just produces little kid giddiness.

I’m always curious about these stores though. In recent years they’re HUGE, the size of a Best Buy or a Target, because often they’re in a building that used to BE a Best Buy or a Target. Often the very same shelves that previously held decorative pumpkin scented candles, now hold… decorative pumpkin scented candles.

You don’t find this sort of retail recycling for any other holiday or event. Halloween stores are almost universally in previously empty buildings whose previous residents went out of business anywhere from 6 months to 6 years ago. Then on November 1st they’re gone without a trace like Mr. Elvis’s Magic Shop, leaving the boarded up shell in their wake.

As much as I love these stores, I find this a little disconcerting. It seems like these stores rely on a failing economy for their existence. I’m not trying to make some political statement, revealing Halloween stores as soulless opportunists, it just seems weird. It is, appropriately, creepy.

Where are the stores when there is not an abundance of empty buildings? Living in the Steel Belt, it’s hard to imagine this being a problem. I can’t see Halloween stores having a hard time finding a spot any time soon. But what happens on the highly hypothetical day that Cleveland’s economy explodes? Do these stores just disappear?

I don’t think so. I think they find a place where there was no space before. On a previously empty wall, a door glowing at the edges with evil smelling fake fog. A construction site completed overnight, then bulldozed again next month. Maybe a derelict house on the corner turns on a neon sign and starts selling ghosts. You follow a black cat and realize you’re lost in a part of town you’ve never seen before, and that you’ll never find again.

How else COULD it be? It’s Halloween.

(click for larger version)

In February of 2007, Janice and her life-partner Lisa Pond were beginning a vacation with three of their four children when Lisa collapsed on the deck of a cruise ship. Lisa was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital (Florida) and Janice followed with their children as quickly as she could.

Half an hour after arriving at the hospital, a social worker went to Janice and told her, ““you are in an anti-gay city and state. And without a health care proxy you will not see Lisa nor know of her condition.”

Janice, a former health care worker, responded quickly, having her legal Durable Powers of Attorney faxed to the hospital. In spite of this, Janice and their children were left in the waiting room with no information for several hours. Eventually a surgeon told her that Lisa had suffered an aneurysm and would have no recovery.

A priest came to give Lisa last rites, and Janice attended with him, seeing her life partner for the first time in five hours. After the rites, Janice was ushered back into the waiting room.

Lisa was in the trauma room for 8 hours, but Janice was denyed the comfort of being with her during her final hours, minutes. Their children, legal children of both Janice and Lisa, were not allowed in to say goodbye before their mother died. Jance continued to wait in a non-informational bubble until Lisa’s sister came to the hospital. At that time, Lisa’s sister was told that Lisa had been moved more than an hour ago. They had not bothered to tell Janice or their children, waiting in useless space. The blogpost explaining the case can be found here.

In some ways, this story has nothing to do with Same Sex Marriage. Power of Attorney is exactly the legal protection someone is told to get if they want to make sure they’ll be allowed to be present in the event of a loved one’s deathbed. This is the power that allows you to make medical decisions for someone, to stay informed on their condition, to be allowed to visit their bed if it is medically possible. If a gay woman with Power of Attorney was denied those rights, there is no reason to believe she would have been given information and access even if she had a legal marriage. There was NO legal basis to keep Janice away from Lisa as she lay dying. As for keeping out the children, there is no human explanation. It’s nothing short of hateful.

The dismissal of the case is an endorsement for Legal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

This is not being overly dramatic. If there is no other legal basis for the decision, it can only be legal discrimination. My concern, beyond the obvious unfairness, is that if it is “ok” to discriminate based on sexual orientation for ignoring Power of Attorney, perhaps it is also ok to discriniate for treatment. This may seem like a stretch, but the precedent has just been set. I only hope they appeal.

In other ways of course, this is entirely about gay marriage. I have never understood why people who feel it is “wrong” for gay people to marry, think their belief entitles them to make the marriage illegal. Laws are meant to protect us, not to cage us, at least in this supposedly free country. Having same sex marriage in no way harms those who feel it is immoral. Keeping it illegal on the other hand, harms many.

I do not however think that legalizing gay marriage is the solution. Rather, I think all “legal” marriage should be abolished. Too many people of this country have proven that they are incapable of understanding the difference between legal marriage and religious marriage. Here is the point: the rights given by a legal marriage CANNOT be determined by religious standards. It doesn’t matter if we call it a marriage or a bunny rabbit; the only thing the STATE can grant two people, any two people, is a civil union. Currently, most states call this civil union a marriage. A few states call civil unions a marriage when it is between a man and a woman, but a civil union when it’s between two men, or two women.

It’s idiotic. Let’s just call them all civil unions and be done with it. If marriage is so loaded a word that we automatically attach religious meaning to it, the state has no business granting it, any more than it should start baptizing babies, or mandating fasting periods.

It is as problematic to have the state grant marriages as it would be to have the state tell churches who can marry. If the idea of having two men marry seems wrong to you, imagine having the government tell your church that they must allow men to marry each other.

Leave marriage where it belongs: In church. It should be up to churches to decide who can and cannot marry. If your church says it’s a sin for a woman to love another woman, that is their right, no one can force them to allow it. That’s what a separation between church and state MEANS. Meanwhile, if those crazy Unitarian Universalists start marrying Jane and Jane, WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? Please. I am begging. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Let them live their lives freely.

Why does everyone hate the suburbs? Why have the suburbs come to represent all that is evil, all that is fake, soccer moms and security moms and helicopter parents and materialism? This annoys me, because as Matt and I start looking for a house I find myself having to defend our choice to look in pure suburbia.

Really I know the whys. One of the first culprits is Tim Burton. More specifically, Edward Scissorhands. I’m sure this movie wasn’t the first vision of suburban sameness, but the uniformly green grassed sameness has come to be part of popular consciousness, whether people realize it or not. The creepy echoes in Buron’s invented neighborhood are a fairly accurate reflection of many developments in post 1960s America, but they just as well describe the world of Camazots from Madeleine L’Engle‘s A Wrinkle in Time. Not exactly positive associations, as was clearly intended.

And that’s fine. The artificiality being satired in Edward Scissorhands absolutely exists, and it can often be found in the suburbs. The problem I have is with the modern assumption that the suburbs are the cause. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a small enough city that it might as well be a suburb of itself. In my memory I lived in two different houses that were both cookie-cutter floorplans resulting from Eugene’s relatively rapid expansion. In spite of this supposed “sameness,” there was NEVER during my childhood, any sense of conformity in the homes around me. I’ve seen developments where the only difference from one house to the next is the paint color or a window shape, or a brick pattern. In the neighborhoods where I grew up, there was no need to fight for differentiation, because in spite of the repeated architecture, there was no standard look that the residents needed to fight against or conform to.

The sameness we find, I think comes from desire rather than actual similarities. The reason is not the location (suburbs), it’s that keeping-up-with-the-Joneses race that probably helped get us into the whole real estate mess in the first place. I need a bigger, more perfect house, because the neighbors have one. He needs a BMW because his cousin just bought one. It’s stupid, and it has nothing to do with a place, it has everything to do with people.

Matt and I eventually want to live in a house with a bit of land around it, in a safe neighborhood, with decent schools (since we’ll eventually be having kids) and less than an hour commute to the city. These are really not ridiculous wants, and the obvious answer, the only answer, is the suburbs. We hope to keep a garden that grows as much of our food as possible, maybe put up some solar panels or even small windmills, to keep energy costs down. I grew up with a backyard and I want my kids to have one too. We’d like some sort of woodland nearby. Basically, we want a compromise between urban and rural living.

If the human race is to survive into the 23th century, or the 30th century, I imagine someday we’ll all end up living in cities. This is (or could be) the most sustainable way to live, and at some point we won’t have a choice. In suburbs, people use hours worth of gas daily getting to and from work, burn up heat in poorly insulated homes, and spend gallons of water on uselessly green lawns. Maybe that’s why living in the suburbs is so detestable: the seizing of privacy, of space, of control and resources may well be selfish. I am occasionally drawn to the idea of living in an urban environment, with rooftop gardens and shops downstairs. There is appeal, until I remember that I can’t breathe after a few hours in New York, that I get itchy when I hear my neighbors through paper-thin walls, that the only thing I would own of the outside is a door. Someday I hope, large buildings will be planned with more public space, more green space, more space in general to keep us sane. Right now urban living is fun for some, but not a life I can imagine.

Ultimately, the life I’m seeking may not be sustainable. Suburbs, and most rural life, may fade away as energy sources dwindle and people are forced to huddle together for conservation. My response to that is to try and make a life with as small a footprint as possible, mainly to assuage the guilt that we’re contributing to the problem. I do think it’s possible to enjoy living in a dense population, I just don’t think it’s possible for me, today. I can only hope that by the time we have no choice, urban designers have come up with ways to make living wall to wall more tolerable.

*First photo by Wildernice, all others by me.

In my high school world history class, our teacher stressed the significance of the invention of mathematics. Also the concept of zero. Both are extremely important, and probably represent huge moments in human achievement.

That they are important is inarguable (not true, everything can be debated given enough alcohol time, but never mind), but they’re also sort of inevitable. Simple math, numbers, counting: all came from trade. Business men needed a way to differentiate more from less, to assure that they were getting a reasonably equal worth. The origins of writing can be found in these clerical slips. Symbolic representation does not come from a human need for art or communication. It comes from accounting.

As significant and important as it is, I can’t help but think it must not have taken a huge leap of genius to start counting apples and oranges (or really probably dates and papayas since we are talking about the cradle of civilization here). You don’t really need the deep philosophy behind math to understand that 5 is more than 4. Babies and animals can identify these basic differences, because the concepts of less and more are far simpler than 4 and 5. Much (most?) of math comes down to this idea. Basic algebra is not that difficult, and honestly has more to do with logic than math. All I’m getting at here is that however much we may have pulled out our hair writing calculus proofs, math as an idea is pretty intuitive.

MATH though is more than numbers. Math is about theories, about twisting common sense, about measuring things that cannot be measured (imaginary numbers anyone?). Physics is a practical application of mathematics, and a theoretical physician can tell you exactly how practical physics is. Engineering is the practical application of physics, and even they come up with some whoopers.

The invention of zero falls firmly in the realms of math as a theory, beyond the tangible. If you’ve never heard of zilch, it’s a bit more of a stretch to conceive of it, but I still don’t think it’s particularly miraculous.

“0″ as a number might be hard to understand, but the concept of zero is pretty simple; it is nothing, it is absence, it has existed and been related to in all of human history because it is death. As I said, the application of zero is a bit more than “do not have” just as 5 is more than apples (dates). At some point though, it is not all that surprising that someone said: “I had five apples. Now I do not have them. Ergo: zero.” (All inventers must say ergo. Or possibly thenceforth.)

I say this not to understate the hugeness of inventing zero, is is merely to explain how small the understanding of zero is compared to the understanding of million.

I can have five apples. I can have zero oranges. But I guarantee I will never have a million apples or oranges. Even if I do, if you see what I mean.

To talk about millions is as effective as talking about infinity. No matter how long you look at a book with a million ants, or a million cars, or a million people, your brain, or at least MY brain, is incaple of comprehending any more than the trollish concept of “lots.” If you were to show me a photo with an infinite number of marbles (not possible I know) I would think: lots. A billion=lots. Million=lots. 100,000=lots. To be perfectly honest, 500=lots.  I’m not sure what the numerical cuttoff is, but I suspect it’s a much lower number than we think. I certainly understand that a million is more than 500, but it ceases to be a question of “how many” and becomes a question of “how big.” The group of ants with a million is bigger than the group with 500, but as far as my brain’s ability to count is concerned, there is NO OTHER DIFFERENCE. I can know that there are more ants in the million group, but it is impossible for me to see it.

1,000,000 is a number, but it’s not a real number. It is absolutely possible for something to exist and not be real. If you want to count the grains of sand on a beach, the answer is not a number, the answer is: It’s sand. The number is sand. How many stars are there? Lots. The number of stars is stars. That is the nature of stars, that they are uncountable. The fact that there are a finite number of sand grains (or stars, though I have no idea if that number is finite) is completely irrelevant because even if a machine counter told you that there were 94,392,347,778 grains of sand, the answer would still be: It’s sand.*

I would guess that it was far easier to invent the number 1 million than the number 0, but there is such a huge difference between knowing and understanding. In these days of unfathomable deficits, idiotic house prices, and rising world population, million has become common as dirt, and is generally shuffled aside for words like billion and even trillion. Ultimately though, they might as well use the same number, because it’s all the same to me.

*The irony here is that in order to explain the concept of infinity, all you can do is compare it to a really big number, while in reality the closest we come to honestly understanding a really big number is infinity, which is actually not all that difficult to understand, and basically comes down to: +1 etc.
**Photos by me, Srqpix Bruno Girin and Sanyam Studios.