“I’ve run lots of charts and I’ve never seen this,” my friend Carinn said, when I forwarded her the results of my astrology reading. “Very special.”
This was helpful news, and not only because I love being called “very special.” Mostly, I appreciated her expertise in decoding what it means to be a Cancer sun, Aries moon, and Gemini rising. She broke it down for me: Dispersing a message is central to your identity…You were born to give of what you have. What writer-mother-wife-friend-Alanon doesn’t want to hear this? (It seems I conveniently forgot that the other half of that breakdown was that I have to find appropriate places to drop all my wisdom bombs. HELLO, SUBSTACK!)
The whole reason I signed up to have my chart read was because Carinn’s affection for astrology had rubbed off on me. I’d heard her talk about transits and retrogrades, and I wanted to know more. Maybe you’ve heard her podcast, Pop Fiction Women, where she and her co-host Kate weave their interest in astrology into their conversations with New York Times bestselling authors and successful showrunners. Kate and Carinn each have a background as Wall Street attorneys, they are smart AF, and they love talking about astrology. Because I love Carinn, I dabbled in her passion, which brought me an unexpected sense of peace and comfort during an emotionally turbulent stretch last spring. In fact, Carinn’s interest in astrology runs so deep that she used it as a major centerpiece of her debut novel, The Astrology House, (out this July from Atria) and excuse me, but does it get any more inspiring than that? Have I tried to copy her by parlaying my Willie Nelson/outlaw country music hobby into a two-book deal? Yes, reader, I have, but there’s no fruit on that vine yet.
SPEAKING OF FRUIT:
KB is my friend who says things like, “I’m going to the plant sale at the nursery,” or “I put the garden to bed this weekend.” She’s a master gardener who spends hours every spring digging in the dirt and tending her plot. When I stepped into her backyard a few years ago, I felt like I’m tumbled into an arboretum. Everywhere I looked there was a plump vegetable or flowering blossom. I’m several fields away from master gardener, but I have 8 boxwoods and four hydrangeas I’m trying to do right by. I’m not sure I would have undertaken landscaping duties had I not watched KB tend her garden all these years.
Like KB, my friend J dove into a gardening passion when she moved to the country a few years ago. When she sent me a recent picture of her lupines (which I mistook for bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas), I thought it was a CGI-enhanced image. The purple on those flowers! The height of those stems! My lord. (I’m sorry to report to my Texas readers, that not everything is bigger in Texas.)
Not all of my amigos have tapped into worlds I plan to dip my toes into, but I’ve enjoyed some educational and entertaining dinners with friends whose passions include kink and polyamory. If I’m being real honest, and what the hell, it’s Memorial Day weekend, I’ve been knocked out of my comfort zone during some of those conversations. I celebrate that too! Nothing wrong with learning about my friends’ sexual vistas over some gnocchi. Is there anything more energizing than watching your friends’ faces animate as they describe the activities and practices that make them feel alive?
My friend S studies languages for pleasure and personal edification, though he treats it with the reverence of religion. He’s up to seven languages. Maybe eight. This octolingual pal has a day job as a medical professional and a family, but his relationship to language-learning is part of his soul’s calling. Am I going to wake up before sunrise to attend a Zoom Punjabi lesson every Friday morning? Let’s not bet on that, but I will happily listen to S talk about what acquiring languages means to him all day. Or at least over the course of a 90-minute coffee date.
To my friends the golfers, the Dave Matthews followers, the pickle-ballers, the thrifters, the foodies, the beer brewers, bakers, and birders—that which has enriched you has enriched me too, even if I never learn Farsi or the art of flogging. I praise your sparks; I warm my hands in your glow.
This really speaks to me, and I feel this way about so many friends too.