Meta Virgo

I was born four months after the fall of Saigon. The Vietnam War is an anchor, my birth is an anchor, for the women in my life.

I’m a second generation Virgo mother. My innate traits compounded like a mason layering precise rows of bricks for his wall. My determination and drive for perfectionism breathed into my body and over my shoulder. Exampled and echoed in every activity.

Kay was my maternal grandmother. I was named for her. She was bright, I was told, if she lived in modern times she would have been university educated. Kay was creative and vivacious. She thwarted the life she was destined for when she married an alcoholic.

I texted my mother: When was your mom’s birthday?

Read yesterday. I called for fear I had cracked open a wound.

“It was sad,” my mother said. “The whole thing was sad. If she had lived, you would have had a very different life. She adored you.” The fall of Saigon was April 30, 1975. Jack Younger returned home from service. Somewhere Kay met him, this soft spoken soldier who didn’t drink or smoke, and somehow she left my grandfather. I was born in September that year and was fresh sparkle in her eyes. Kay fell in love with Jack and promptly died of lung cancer before I was two. “I didn’t text back because I can’t remember,” my mother said quietly. “January 21st or maybe the 23rd.”

“It’s just a fact, mom,” I said. “Facts come and go. It doesn’t mean you love her any less.” I wanted to ask what Kay’s middle name was but couldn’t bear to unearth if she had forgotten that too.

Kay raised a Sun in Virgo Moon in Taurus woman. Modest, self-sacrificing, reserved. Picky, critical, hesitant. Kay’s daughter also picked an alcoholic. She raised a second Virgo the way a plow furrows a field. As she had been shown, hard and unavoidable.

I’m a Virgo, baby, the Scribe. Hard working, creative, reliable, kind. Critical, stubborn, picky, uptight. I experienced most of our major earthquakes in the office after hours. I have avoided the cliche of being incredibly neat because I have a photographic memory. I never stop analyzing and have bittersweet moments of clarified understanding thirty years too late. I try to focus my perfectionism only inward. I grind. I get better. I run marathons, triathlons, races that have you push through thigh-deep bogs in winter because I strive to be better. It’s either an incredible diligence or atonement for past sins.

Moon in Scorpio is my plot twist. Impulsive, passionate, secretive, seductive, but most of all hidden. I appear reserved and logical but base my decisions on emotion and intuition. I plumb the human experience and have more regret than I can bear. I am the best and the worst, and unforgettable for either reason. My intuition is like a pet monkey I can’t rehome. It has saved my life and it has illuminated betrayal. It has said, “Change lanes.” I do and watch the trailer I was following burst into flames and slam on the brakes. It has whispered me awake,”Psst, he is in the laundry room with her. You should go see.”

I am a negotiator, lawful good, a quiet listener with great attention to detail. I observe your tells: when your hands start to shake and you hold them together, what you do with your pen. I want us both to win, my empathy cartooned into a cosmic love. I will cross the t’s and dot the i’s. I will ensure our relationship, our contract, is grounded and earthen. I will make sure you can stand tall with your colleagues.

I love you, I text my mom. I am the umbrella of this family now. I had a champion though I simply played at her feet. Rest in peace, Kay. Rest in peace, Jack. I will run in the rain for you both.