Eight years after a fateful encounter with a zodiacally-enlightened coed educated me about both my shameful cosmic composition and the undeserved power that came along with it, I found myself in the Labor & Delivery ward of a hospital less than 40 miles from the college campus where I’d learned about my inner darkness. Despite what you may have heard about Scorpios, we actually can develop meaningful, loving relationships with people other than ourselves, and that relationship had created a little dude who came into the world on a chilly January night under the sign of Capricorn. If you follow the Zodiac, you know this was really good news for me: Capricorns are steady and dependable, and they don’t get super emotional, which is good for Scorpios, who tend to be, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, emotionally unhinged lunatics who are really, really good at hiding that crazy way deep down inside.
And sure enough, as my little Capricorn grew into the goat he was meant to be, we got along great. Cap isn’t as typically ambitious as most of his kith, but he’s wise and grounded and practical, and those are all great traits to have in a kid who you have to live with.
Cap isn’t without his complications, but those complications probably don’t have as much to do with his sign as they do with a handful of diagnoses that make him a complex, mystifying little bundle (for “little,” read “taller than me” and for “bundle” read “teenage boy with a moustache”).
The best part about my Cap? Besides his bizarre, uncanny ability to hear a coin hit the ground a hundred feet away during peak hours at an amusement park, Cap loves to read.
Unsurprisingly, I love a reader.
Two years later, we switched gears and decided to have a baby in the spring rather than the winter (although as a Midwesterner, a spring baby that comes in April is more of a second-winter baby, one who makes its appearance just after the last last snowfall but before the “the Pollening”).
A late-April baby comes with one word attached: Taurus. As in bull. As in bull-headed. As in…my daughter. Don’t get me wrong: a young woman going out into the world could do worse than to be determined, stubborn, outrageously (perhaps even unjustifiably) confident, and totally impervious to correction, but those traits don’t always work well in the home environment when the correction is coming from me and the young woman in question lives in the cesspit of a room across the hallway.
When Taurus was born, my mother laughed. “Now you’ll get your comeuppance,” she said, and she hugged me and smiled and told me she loved me, but a dancing sparkle in her eyes told me she was maybe, just possibly, not entirely teasing.
Oh, how wise that woman was!
My first wrinkle? Taurus did that. My first gray hair? Totally Taurus. I’ve never had a nervous breakdown (as of this writing), but if I ever do, you’ll know who deserves the credit.
None of this should be terribly surprising because Scorpio and Taurus are not what you’d call simpatico. They’re actually opposites in the zodiac cycle. And since I’m a mom and she’s my daughter, we’re sort of opposites in our home as well: I’m the senior woman in the household, and I see that as a position of authority, but she’s the next generation of woman in the household, and that holds its own brand of authority.
She’s the oldest daughter, and as a Taurus, she’s responsible, mature, and independent, which means I can trust her to take care of things around the house that Cap and his delightful atypicality may not suited for. But entrusting her with responsibility bolters her immunity to criticism, critique, and correction; as the mom, the Three Cs are kind of my jam. Hence, enter the fourth C: conflict. Sheesh.
The upshot of this is that Taurus is scary smart, completely confident in her ability to navigate any situation, and well-positioned for a career in ruthless tyrann—I mean, business, politics, diplomacy, or entrepreneurship.
Bottom line, she’ll do just fine…assuming I let her live long enough to move out.
To be continued in Zodiacs, part 3…