My friend tells me that Mercury’s in Retrograde and I ask how she knows. My grandmother, she says simply, and I think of her family even though I have never met them, passing traditions and babies, hand to hand.
My friend digs up my horoscope, sends me a video. I spend twenty minutes watching an astrologer tell me about October, how Mercury in Retrograde will send the beginning of the month into a tailspin, how the eighth will be a tough day and how things will get better on the twenty-third. It’s a passing interest, mostly. An observer listening through the door to a sermon about a god she doesn’t believe in.
But that night I sit on the front stoop, shoulder to shoulder with my husband to open the mail. Out falls my first speeding ticket ever. Twenty-six miles per hour, or so they claim. And I’m wondering, maybe, if there’s some truth to this after all. If I should be paying closer attention to the movement of stars.
Change isn’t always a bad thing, my friend says. You have to roll with the waves, even when it’s tough. Things will clear up.
I picture her, three states away, her hands on the keyboard, typing a message into the ether. She is smiling, I feel.
Know whatever change is coming is the one you need. You have to be willing to let it in.
I close my eyes and try to listen. Let things grow quiet, open my heart.
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