Every year about this time a fat envelope arrives from my health insurance company. Its contents require more reading than I, who love books, can manage. Plus I’ve learned those freshly minted words are just fancy ways of saying “Here’s how we’re going to give less to you and your son.” Six weeks from now they’ll send a smaller envelope announcing how much more I’ll need to pay for this reduced coverage. This has been happening for years. The US is the only western industrialized nation that doesn’t have a universal health care system. President Obama recently said that we can’t afford to wait another year to reform the crushing costs of health care. With Saturn in health-conscious Virgo through October 2009, with can-do visionaries Neptune and Jupiter blending forces with the wounded healer Chiron–now and throughout the year ahead–we must do more than complain, hope, or dream. We must insist on real change. I want nothing but good-news envelopes from my health insurance company. I want the same for you.

Gemini is the sign of the messenger. Let’s use this cycle to make our voices heard.

Like doctors who neglect their health, most astrologers ignore their own charts. This means I’d forgotten an astrological milestone was coming. I’m a Sagittarian, yet my progressed Sun has been in Capricorn for thirty years, and now it was entering Aquarius. On the very day it occurred, I impulsively signed up for Facebook. Aquarius is the sign of social networking and that’s how progressions work: even without looking at your chart you go ahead and change.

Capricorn climbs mountains. It keeps pushing for better results. It’s the stern parent who expects way too much. And that’s where I got caught. Between all those years of Capricorn and the just-opened door of progressive Aquarius. I didn’t know what to write for my Facebook bio. Capricorn would have typed a complaint: “I’m someone who hasn’t lived up to her potential—I’m not as rich, thin, or accomplished as I should be.” But Aquarius didn’t know what to say. Zero degrees of a new sign is like that. It’s empty and full of promise, like the vineyard that halted me one day while walking my dog. “Yes,” I thought staring at the bare vines, rows and rows of staked hope, “that’s just how I feel. Something is coming, but it’s not here yet.”

That was two months ago and I still haven’t created my Facebook page. But with the New Moon in Gemini, I promise this cycle I’ll do it. Every year I aim to do something new during Gemini’s cycle. Perhaps I’ll even find that I like Facebook (though I don’t quite get the fascination). At the least, the Capricorn ghost inside me will be able to cross one more thing off her list.

I didn’t expect a lot on Mother’s Day. When my my 16-year-old got up at noon and uttered a groggy “Happy Mother’s Day,” I figured that was it—until I made the mistake of opening the envelope from his school. It contained the grades that were far worse than he’d led me to believe. This is an old battle between us, but as college looms, and his hormones rage, we’ve both become more intense. Our voices were loud. His became a scream in fact, as he wanted to slam the door or hit the wall and instead just yelled, as though he were being water-boarded. Then came a soft knock at the door. I opened it. Two policemen, one policewoman, and a county sheriff eyed me warily. It seems the tennis players in the park behind our house thought our voices were worthy of a call to 911. I was confused and vaguely wondered if it had become illegal to argue in your home. Then I thought: this is Mother’s Day! My Mother’s Day!

The cops left quickly, after giving each of us our separate lectures. But as the door closed, I felt something had broken in me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was fragile, like the hand-blown glass figurines that used to dazzle me as a child or the precious cobalt Christmas orb my great grandmother had carried carefully from Germany many years ago. What broke was something delicate and deep. Maybe it was just the idea that I’m not the kind of person who draws cops to her house on Mother’s Day. Maybe it was the idea that my son and I are not those people.

But now we were.

There’s an old Chinese story about a farmer who buys a beautiful stallion; then his son falls off the horse and breaks his leg. “How tragic!” exclaim the neighbors. The farmer shrugs: “Maybe not, maybe so.” The next day the king’s soldiers come to town and conscript every able-bodied man to fight their war, leaving behind only the farmer’s son with his broken leg. “How wonderful!” exclaim the neighbors. Again the farmer shrugs: “Maybe not, maybe so.”

The day after Mother’s Day, my son and I could laugh at our experience. We were also chastened and changed. As the “authorities,” cops are ruled by Saturn. Saturn was squaring my son’s Ascendant that Sunday and he got his Saturn lesson. He is now treating me with more respect, acting more mature, and catching his teenaginess more quickly. Saturn was also quincunx my Mercury and I’ve adjusted my thoughts about parenting. I’m now firmer, more Saturn-like, which may in the long run be the better gift to give my son. So perhaps it was a fine Mother’s Day after all, I say. Then I shrug: Maybe not, maybe so.

Mercury stationed retrograde yesterday and my bank denied the personalized image I requested for my credit card (it seems I don’t own the copyright to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus…but oh, in my heart, I do!). I also got a parking ticket and my iPod stopped working. Part of me loves Mercury retrogade. It’s the sleep time of the mental cycle when the busy analytical mind hands the reins to the intuitive brain, “You be in charge for awhile.” It’s great for dipping into a rich mental mousse, but bad if you’re adding columns of numbers, making fine watches, or simply trying to get to the bus on time. I forget about the retrograde annoyances, even though the pre-retrograde usually offers plenty chances to get used them. In recent years it’s seemed the shadow two weeks before the retrograde can be more fraught with miscommunications and errors than the retrograde itself! If you’re unawares of the shift, you might find as I did, a sour and resentful mood taking shape. But then came the retrograde and I got lucky. Mercury woke me up, kicked a little sand in my face, and just dared me to argue with the world. Staring at my dead iPod, I recalled that these are high holy days of Trickster wisdom. This god’s keys to enlightenment? Laugh at yourself and move lightly on!

Mercury is retrograde from May 6 to May 30. The pre-shadow began on April 22; the post-shadow ends on June 14.

About Dana



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