32. Mum

I knew I was a Pisces before I could count. It's the 12th sign in the zodiac, represented by two fish swimming in opposite directions. People born under this sign are creative, alluring, dreamy, and spontaneous. They make great writers and artists, and due to their strong sense of empathy, make ideal lovers, parents, and best friends. I knew all this shortly after I was able to string together whole sentences. This was of course, due to my mother.

She used to have this big astrology book with gilded pages that started to fade after the years. She had three signs bookmarked- hers, (Gemini) my dad's, (Cancer-Leo cusp) and Pisces (mine and my brother's.) She would reference it regularly and laugh when anyone did something true to their sign, which was often enough I guess for her to see a pattern.

She would watch the stars with this deep seeded passion, her big brown eyes looking larger in the night. Instead of telling her children to stop and smell the roses, she'd tell us to take a deep breath and look at the sky. She studied old religions on her own accord and was into ruins. My mother was so incredibly old world sometimes I swear she was dusted off from a story passed down through generations and made into human form. She was olive green dresses, golden jewelry with turquoise centers, the smell of suntan oil, and Frank Sinatra on vinyl. She always sounded as though her voice were recorded on record, dark and raspy like bourbon but with cracks in all the right places. I am yet to meet someone like her and I doubt I ever will.

In my later years when we lived a country apart, she would call me and let me know what the planets are doing or give me tips on my social life.

"The sun's in Scorpio. Have you dated a Scorpio yet? You should, they're a lot of fun.'"

"Tell Abby to stop letting her Virgo brain make her anxious."

"Brace yourself Lulu,"her pet name for me, "Mercury is in retrograde."

When Mercury looks like it's moving backwards in the sky, but it's actually just slowing down its movement, it's called "Mercury Retrograde." According to to astrology it makes everything difficult- communication, travel, technology, you name it. Everything becomes a challenge. This planetary phenomenon happens three to four times a year, and while I'm not sure if I believe it in the astrological sense, my mom used to say that with the moon having control over the ocean, it isn't a stretch to think that the planets could do the same to our internal energies.

"You're made of stardust, "she'd say, "You are as much of the universe as it is you."

I loved how she'd talk science. In her own poetic way she could combine the physical and emotional almost effortlessly. My dad sometimes says she was one of the more illogical human beings he's ever known but I think there is some validity to the way she used the stars to guide her, in a similar way that those who are lost do. My dad is perpetually ruled by plans and maps, my mom by wish and whimsy. Her favorite words were "serendipity " and "enchantment."

"You cannot enjoy life by just rules and numbers," she'd say. "Be open to serendipity and enchantment. There is something lovely lurking in the darkest places. There is something to exciting in the unknown."

Even with Mercury in retrograde, a time where astrologers believe everything is going crazy.

"It happens so frequently because humans think they are invincible. It's there to remind us that there are greater things than us, and to take a step back and be patient."

I reckon that many people would have found her to be crazy and her celestial insights to be silly. People would have found it absurd the number of angel figurines she had in her house or that at fifty years old she still sported a belly button ring with a cross charm hanging from it.

I had a colleague say that she would have found it to be annoying hearing about every time the planets did something funny, but I don't think so at all.

I know it's cliche to say that I wouldn't have traded her for anything, but the truth is she was about as unique as the stars she used to plot. Her aura was a vibrant array of ever changing colors, as though by talking to her you were looking through a kaleidoscope. When she died, that light imploded in on itself, scattering far and wide to moments in the future that I've been finding sporadically in the wake of her absence. Her being is laced in the falling snow and the glow of my eyes. Her blessing is in every pleasant surprise, and her soothing words still console every set back, even if I have to call them up by memory. Most importantly, I'm reminded that if I need to bring myself back to present, to take a deep breath and look up at the sky.