lucky thirteen

I sent this photo to my bff a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon when Quinn came home to me after his week at his Dad’s:

Her response was, “wtf. Did he become an adult in a week?”

Straight to the point, exactly what I was thinking. She always does that.

When I was pregnant with Quinn I had the requisite pregnancy dreams, but I could never see my baby’s appearance, no facial features at all. Just one time, in one single dream, I saw him clearly, face, hair, posture, but as a teen, maybe sixteen, not a baby or even a young child. And this person standing in front of me looking me almost squarely in the eye is becoming exactly the boy I saw in my dream.

It’s a Fibonacci birthday for Quinn! The next time he has one of those, he’ll be turning 21! Eek! Time feels like it moves along like a Fibonacci sequence, spiraling ever more quickly, in bigger bites each year. It does feel like he was 1 for a while, then 2, then 3, then started jumping from 5 to 8 to 13, soon he’ll be 21 and before I know it he’ll be 34!

This spiral I printed on Quinn’s birthday card represents the Fibonacci sequence up to 13, and I have talked before about how I love the idea of spirals as a metaphor for watching my child develop, and the way we are both now able to look back together on his younger years from our positions higher up our spiral staircases, a feeling I couldn’t have anticipated when I was having a baby, or when he was little. I couldn’t picture coming home from our w pancake’s first birthday party yesterday, pulling out the baby book to show Quinn photos of his own first birthday, and listening to him make comparisons between his one-year-old self and his little niece.

Prime numbers are just cool. When he has his next prime birthday, I imagine he will look exactly like the teen of my pregnancy dream. How crazy to think seventeen is such a short few years ahead of us.

Thirteen is the smallest emirp, any prime number that is also a prime when its digits are reversed (31).

Thirteen is also a Wilson prime, and there are not very many of those! A Wilson prime is a prime number p such that p² divides (p − 1)! + 1.  I checked the math on this: 13² is 169; 12! +  1 =  (12x11x10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1) +1 = 479,001,601; and 479,001,601 divided by 169 is 2,834,329. It divides evenly! The only known Wilson primes are 5, 13, and 563, so Quinn’s next Wilson prime birthday is way off in the fourth dimension!

Though a year contains twelve solar months, part of the thirteenth lunar month is also included in one year. A baker’s dozen tide cycles to enjoy!

Thirteen is cleaning his room independently, having a passport, opening a checking account, getting a debit card, taking ownership of his google account, having an A in Algebra, reminding me not to buy anything “too dorky” when I went to buy some paper party plates at the dollar store. It’s sitting here writing this blog post while some new teenagers sing Take on Me and fling themselves around the trampoline, then carry out a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, emptying bowls of snacks while one of them strums my guitar. Imagine thinking 13 is unlucky. In Italy, where Quinn is heading soon, fare tredici (translated literally, to do 13) is to hit the jackpot! Any way you calculate it, 13 feels incredibly lucky to this mama! Happy birthday, mighty Quinn!