Like The Queen
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004  

Mercury is forming benevolent aspects to Neptune and Saturn. These cosmic influences will ensure you grow more confident and relaxed. They will begin by making an inroad into your greatest material concern. Next, they will turn their attention to your personal life. By enabling you to feel more secure and comfortable, they will help you get along much better with someone who means the world to you. And they will render you more attractive too. They will also inspire you to commence a new venture... which should prove surprisingly successful.

See why I love to read this guy’s horoscopes? It’s true too. There has been a whopping pile of tension in my material world that is about to resolve itself into the placid calm of cool water on a summer’s afternoon. Whether it is the result of Mercury (planet of communication) finally speaking up about Issues or Neptune’s creative stimulus, or Saturn’s calming influence, while lightening up on it’s tendency to strip away my confidence, or - perhaps, it is merely the fact that when I have had enough (especially worry and self doubt) I finally get off my butt and do what I knew I ought to have done right from the start - but we seem to have pushed through the cloud of frustration and floated out on that sea of understanding that makes problems, both big and little, seem so solvable.

And of course, there is a new venture I am contemplating - but it’s way too new to talk about. And it’s nice to think the planets are looking favorably at my aspirations.

It is crack-0-dawn right now - still early enough that little bugs fly into the house, attracted by the glow of the monitor. Our doors are slightly cracked open because, in ever damp Virginia, it takes a while for oil based enamel to dry. Our MwP painted the outside doors yesterday and BD is fussing about them like a Tasha Tudor old maid. He called twice yesterday, to warn me to be careful when I came home - not to step on the threshold or touch the door. Impressively, our MwP will be finished by Friday. Today they hit my bedroom and Thursday they will tackle “duh cave”. This is what, in his heavy Massachusetts accent, unsoftend by 20 years of southern influence, head painter calls BD‘s office. It is a cave, too - narrow, long, dark and wall-to-wall with books. Now and then I swipe the vacuum down the center of the floor, but I don’t try to really make a difference in there. It will be transforming, to have our MwP sweep through the place.

But then they’ll be gone. I feel a little silly to be so nostalgic about bidding house painters good-bye - but there it is. I am not always so reactionary, but I do enjoy pleasant men hanging about the house ... particularly when they are making it look so good.

Today is LD‘s birthday. He is 28. He has truly given me 28 years of joy. When I was a girl I wanted a big family and when BD proposed he said he didn’t want any children at all. I informed him that, if this was so, he didn’t want to marry me, because I wanted 7 children. Alas, it was not meant to be - and sometimes, I wonder, if, before I was born, God offered me the choice of One Perfect One or a Bunch-0-Brats. No need to wonder which I chose.

One of the traditions surrounding LD‘s birthday is to tell again The Story Of William’s Birth. It was a thrilling tale of passion and emotion and energy and fear, excitement, love, fury, terror and hatred and death, filled with thrilling delight, blissful joy and culminating in a blossoming of a life so wonderful, so valuable, and so much darn fun I ought not ever be unhappy again.

This year, though, I told the tale on Mother’s Day, sitting around LD‘s kitchen table, to him, his GF, and BD, remembering all the excitement that was that special May 12 so long ago. It was a Wednesday then, too, and I remember feeling sorry, because the old poem goes “Wednesday’s child is full of woe”.

When I was about 8 I read in one of our books the poem “Monday's Child”. I can see me now, holding the book wide open, walking into the kitchen and asking my mama what day I was born on - which was a Sunday. As if it was only a moment ago, I can remember the wheels in my brain turning - those diabolical little-sister wheels, useful only for torturing older sisters. “And what day was L born?”

“Monday”

Ahh sweet revenge of the middle child.

I can feel how it was to slowly turn, that book, that proof of veracity, still open in my hands, and look innocently at my sister. How did I know just what button to push?

“Look. You have only one good thing about you, while I have four.”

Such simple little words. Such subtle accuracy. Oh evil one, oh cruel thing.

“Maaaa maaaa! She has four good things and I have only one”

Yes. I can hear her wail now. I still remember how stupid I thought she was to care what a little brat like me said. Even Mama just about said those words, though she was far to kind and loving to even think of any of her children as brats.

“It’s only a book. What do you care what some poet writes?”

Which is exactly what I thought too. But I said. “See? It’s written in a book. It must be true.”

What’s a little salt between sisters, right? And any 13 year old who cares what a shrimp of an 8 year old says deserves to have her knickers twisted.

And besides, LD‘s life has exposed the lie of that stupid poem. What the heck does Mother Goose know about it?

Anyway, in honor of this happy day we will feast our darling, and his GF with his favorites - which includes a filled cake, which I must make now - so it is Ta and farewell. Go hug your sibling, thankful that, at least you were not cursed with me for a sister. And Happy Birthday to You.

posted by Bess | 6:10 AM
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