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Introducing Linus Winston:

He’s a three-week-old, tricolour, American shorthair, and he is so sweet and chill.  The woman let us know on Friday afternoon that we were getting the pig, but my stomach was still in knots despite the promise.  This year has been so shitty; it didn’t seem possible that things would actually work out.

But after shul, we drove an hour to the farm and picked up Linus.  He is very different from Truman.  First of all, he loves to be carried.  He spent the whole day being held, and he let me walk around, cleaning up the house one-handed.  On the other hand, he hates being held under his arms, which was the only way to carry Tru.  Linus is willing to go into any room.  Truman hated going upstairs unless it was to meet his nemesis, rake. (And, even then, he loved fighting rake but he hated the process of getting upstairs to pounce on him.)  Truman was silent for the first few days, and Linus has been talking non-stop.  Both are definitely lap pigs; they are content to curl up in my lap while I read a book.

So we’re missing Truman and his sweetness at the same time as we’re loving on Linus.

So, his name.  It was really hard to name Linus.  We had a few other names picked out, but we ultimately felt that Linus was the best one.  (Not just because now there is someone else in the house with a Greek name.)

Linus is named after Linus Pauling; a two-time Nobel laureate, once for chemistry and once for peace.  In this time when the country seems to be at war with science, we thought someone who brought both clarity to the nature of the chemical bond as well as spoke about nuclear disarmament was a good role model.  Also, he is named after Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, which is the Wolvog’s operating system obsession of the moment.

His middle name is Winston, after Winston Smith and Winston Churchill.  Smith because 1984 feels very close at the moment, and Churchill for his work during the war.  In both cases, our fond feelings lessen towards the end of the book and the second round as Prime Minister, hence why we made it his middle name (and not his first name, which was being considered).

So this is our new babykins.  My heart is exploding right now.

This week’s Reply All is about John R. Brinkley, American trickster who treated infertility using goat testicles.

I’m only halfway through, but I’m going to start it over this afternoon so the twins can listen to it, too.  There is a twist about twenty minutes into the episode where I internally said, “Oh… this is why you’re telling this story.  Clever.”  It has nothing to do with infertility.  I’m fairly certain you’ll arrive to the same thought at the same time (if not sooner).

Anyway, back to infertility: one of his first treatments was surgically opening the person and tossing in a goat testicle.  The person was sewn up and went on their way.  If they were successful in having a child, they considered their infertility “cured.”  Remember, the number of people who conceive after being diagnosed as infertile but continue trying to add to their family without intervention is about 8%.*  If they weren’t successful in having a child, they generally didn’t talk about it ever again due to the stigma of infertility.

Hence why you heard the success stories but never heard the opposite.  Sound familiar?

Anyway, I was listening to this episode and thinking to myself that I would never allow someone to throw a goat testicle into my body.  And then it occurred to me, as I made my way home, that goat testicle inclusion is EXACTLY what I was willing to do.

Okay, not literal goat testicles (though, to be fair, I have zero clue how one goes about making Follistim), but the equivalent to goat testicles.  The people treated by Brinkley (almost exactly 100 years ago in 1918), were last-century versions of myself; willing to do anything in order to build their family.  When I take a step back and think about where I would place my line in the sand, it was well beyond anything I would do to my body.  The line was only drawn around the child.  I wasn’t willing to harm the child — physically or emotionally — but if you had told me that tossing a goat testicle into my body would work… well… I would have probably opted for the goat testicle.

It is interesting to think about what stories the podcasts of the future will tell about us a hundred years from now (provided that we still have podcasts and are not, in fact, extinct).  Will humans 100 years into the future think we were bizarre?  Our doctors barbaric?  Will they understand that we operated within limitations of knowledge?  That we made the best decisions with the options presented to us?

The side note, of course, is to not judge others for their choices.  Until we have walked in their actual shoes (and spoiler alert: we can’t), understood the actual options at their disposal, we can’t know what sort of decision we would make except thinking we know where we’d draw our line in the sand.

* I covered this in Navigating the Land of If on page 95: “The number of those who conceive after adoption is the exact same as the number of those who are infertile and conceive without treatments after not adopting: around 8 percent.”  In other words, if you continue to have unprotected, well-timed sex, you have an 8% chance of getting pregnant.  Of course, some people will never get pregnant because they have no ovaries or uterus, and some people will get pregnant because their problem wasn’t really infertility (despite the diagnosis) but more poor timing.  But this percentage applies to children conceived after adoption, children conceived spontaneously after a person has stopped trying, and children conceived after a goat’s testicle has been tossed into their mother’s body.

We have started the process of adding another guinea pig to our family.  Before you say anything, it is early.  It is soon.  But I also know that I’m not the kind of person who can be without a pet.  In weighing out the mental health factors in taking time to mourn but being without a guinea pig vs. trying to mourn and care for a new pig at the same time, I’ve opted to go the latter route.

Is it the recommended option?  No.  Is it what I need to do?  Yes.

The woman who gave us Cozy and Truman retired in the fall.  I spent many hours Googling guinea pig breeders within a two hour drive and found only one.  I contacted various clubs in the area that involved animals, and I’m still waiting to hear back if they know about private breeders.  We drove to four different pet stores, but I couldn’t connect emotionally with any of the pigs.  Plus I felt squeamish getting a pig where the store knew nothing about its origins.  They couldn’t tell me age or breed.  Probably not a good sign.

There were a few older pigs in area rescues, but we don’t want an older pig.  We want a baby.  We want as much time as possible with the pig.  Plus all the rescues require you to adopt two pigs, and we only have room for one and have always kept pigs, one at a time.

During my third round of Googling, I found a woman about a half hour away who needs to rehome two infant guinea pigs.  She posted four pictures of the male twins, and my heart exploded.  One was spoken for according to the listing.  The other was available.

I wrote her and she wrote back immediately, admitting that there is a possible person in front of us.  They are on the fence and will decide next weekend.  If that placement falls through, we can bring the pig into our family.  I went to bed staring at his picture.  I woke up and alternated between thinking about Truman and this new pig.

It is hard not to be hopeful, but I keep reminding myself that this is — at best — a 50/50 chance.  Until he is in our family, he is not part of our family.

Part of me wishes that I hadn’t found this pig until the other person had made a decision.  Part of me feels relieved to experience something akin to love toward another pig, even if that pig doesn’t remain in my life.  It means it can happen.  It means we can find another pig who fits into our family, who fills the hole, the missing piece, with its own unique sweetness rather than trying to replace the irreplaceable Truman.

Because I’ve had this fear that my heart wouldn’t let another pig in.  It’s always the fear until it isn’t the fear; that idea that maybe our heart can’t bounce back.  Maybe it’s too broken and this is it.  Or maybe our heart will heal in the surface sense; we’ll be able to coo at other people’s pets even if we know that we won’t be bringing another pet into our own house.

The ChickieNob keeps telling me that our pig is out there.  Maybe it’s the infant pig that we saw in the listing (we’ll know between now and this Saturday).  Maybe it’s a completely different pig we don’t know about yet.  Either way, we’ve started the process.  We’re mourning and filling at the same time.

We had to put Truman to sleep.  And now the house is very quiet; so still that it feels like even I am not really here.

On his last day, he watched me do yoga.  He wasn’t eating despite wheeking for food and nosing his bowl every few minutes, seeing if I gave him something different.  He didn’t want lettuce, but I had given him carrots the night before (and he ate all of his overnight food), and didn’t want to give them again.  He even rejected critical care.  The pig never rejected critical care.

I gave him some water by hand and called the vet.

There were two appointments; one if I could get there in the next fifteen minutes and the other in the late afternoon.  I took the one in the afternoon because we live more than fifteen minutes from the vet.  He continued to snuffle around the rest of the day, but was pretty subdued.

And then he lay down on his side and his limbs started shaking.  He arched his head back and his eyes were wide open, but I don’t think he was seeing anything.  I called the vet’s office and was told to bring him in immediately.

I cried the whole drive over there and told him how much I loved him.

The doctor said his heart was barely beating and that it was cruel to keep him alive and let him die slowly over the next hour.  So I picked him up and gave him three kisses — I always gave him three kisses — and stroked him for a little while, repeating how much we love him.  He was so limp, half-gone, and letting out little, shuddering breaths from time to time.  His head never moved from that tilted back position.

After he was gone, she wrapped him in a purple towel and I drove him home.  I didn’t play his vet music in the car because he couldn’t hear it.  I didn’t have to drive with one hand on his back telling him not to climb out of his box because he could no longer climb out of his box.

It was just me, alone, going home to meet Josh and tell the kids that our guinea pig was gone.

They were devastated.  My parents came over and we buried Truman, each of us giving him a last cookie.  I cleaned out his cage and washed his dishes.  And then there was nothing left to do except say, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I am so sad.  A few nights ago, ChickieNob and I were fooling around with Truman, and I took a bunch of pictures of them puckering their lips at one another.  I can’t believe that’s all I have left of my little moo.

I don’t have regrets — Norway was great — but the story is still sort of funny when I admit it aloud.  I gave up a trip to a place I had wanted to go just because I didn’t think it could match the dream version.  It probably can’t — that dream still makes me happy — and my fake Australia did not contain spiders, snakes, or anything that would freak me out during waking hours.

The Atlantic recently had an article about false memories; things we believe with all our heart to be true, but they never happened (or they didn’t happen like that).  We insist that we know for certain the order of events or who was there or what we wore.  It feels so real, and yet scientists can prove that some of our strongest memories still turn out to be false.  They have even been able to easily plant false memories or manipulate memories with just a few words.

Harrington, now a professor of literary journalism the University of Illinois, once said, “Truth is a documentary, physical reality, as well as the meaning we make of that reality, the perceptions we have of it.”

A true story is always filtered through the teller’s take on it.

I guess the article struck me, especially because I read it while I was thinking about the dream.  If I wouldn’t accurately recall the experience regardless, what was the difference between the dream trip and a real trip once we got beyond the logistics of travel?  After the trip was over, my brain would fictionalize my memories of Australia.  Was it worth messing with the perfect Australia in my dream if both dream and real Australia were going to end up as fiction?

There is clearly a lot of worth in travel (beyond getting to spend time with my friend), and I’m being tongue-in-cheek about our memories becoming fictionalized, but the article made me feel a little less embarrassed that I didn’t want to give up the warm, happy memory of my dream for a reality that could never match how I felt winding around the islands.

Does it bother you to think that some of your favourite memories may not be real?  Or are you so happy with the memory that it’s okay if it didn’t exactly happen as you imagine (as long as you never find out otherwise)?