Aquarius Married to Aquarius: Boy Was She PISSED!

My parents were both Aquarians and we were never bored.  In fact, “It’s a sin to bore people”, was one of my mother’s core beliefs. She also thought you should not a pill, nor a martyr. Throwing conniption fits was also frowned upon.

My mother was an artist and she painted, for the most part.  All day, every day. True to her sign, she routinely surprised us. Basically, we’d come home from school to see she’d painted a life-sized bullfighter on the wall… and then one on the door and then one on the other door.  She had a studio in the house and who knew what she’s doing in there?  And really, who cared?

Her paintings were hung on the walls of studio, from the ceiling down to about eye-level of a child. She was immersed in painting and rarely interacted with any of us.  I don’t recall anyone caring about this one way or the other. She was our mother and we did love her, regardless of how this sounds.

We all watched our father like a hawk and considered her to be essentially harmless, especially in comparison.  She didn’t bother us, which is all we could have asked for.  Everyone in my family had their own interests. We were all self-sufficient and had things worked out.

By that I mean, I did all the cooking and my sisters, and myself to a lessor extent, did all the cleaning. My oldest sister washed everyone’s clothes, we all hung them on he clothesline and for some reason, my oldest sister took pride in ironing.  She ironed all our dresses for school, while blathering non-stop about how great she was, including her exceptional, glorious ironing technique. Double Sagittarius.

This reminds me, my mother contributed by making the dresses, which she did by hand as she did not have a sewing machine for many years.  So it’s not like she never contributed. It was more that she was a horrible cook.  She can’t be blamed for this either as she was missing two senses, taste and smell.  How is she supposed to cook?

My father was picky about food, meaning he enjoyed it.  I have always liked to cook, and learn in general. My father taught me the basics and I took over completely, when I was eight years old.

Keep in mind, Aquarius is a Fixed sign so our family life was stable to a large extent.  The kids just got up every day. We got ourselves ready for school and walked through the desert to the bus stop on the desert highway and came home with A’s.  We may not see our mother until late in the afternoon when we got home from school. If we did, it was, ‘Hi, Mom!”, and we were on our way.

I offer these details so you can appreciate the shock of what I came home to one day.  Just a normal day, as far as I knew.   But when I got home, my mother was breaking windows.

When I say, she was breaking windows, I really mean, BREAKING WINDOWS. I was flabbergasted, because my mother was not one to fly into a rage.  But on this day, I came home to glass flying out from the house, but not like your imagination might suggest.

The windows in our house were made of steel and had 12′” panes. MANY of them. For example, the front window had forty-eight panes. The large window in our kitchen had more than sixty.

I approached the house, just as she was breaking the panes in the front window out, one by one. I had no earthly idea what might possibly be going on. I can’t even remember who was there with me; only that I ran in the house to stop her. It took me about ten seconds to realize this would not be possible.  I can’t remember what she said, but it was along the lines of, “Go outside and stand back so you don’t get hurt.”   I complied.

At first, I thought she was going to break the front window panes, but holy cow, she was just getting started.  Once she had broken every pane, she moved to the next room, the next window, and started breaking those panes – glass flying from the house.

It did not take me long to realize, by God, she was going to break every windowpane in the house, which is exactly what she did.  She circled the house from inside. I followed her from the outside.  She’s done, right? The last pane of glass shattered; I was set to step inside the house and survey the damage. Instead, she came outside with an ax. This is when she saw the Blue Streak. My father’s pride and joy.

Of course, she broke the windshield and again, I thought that would be it. But no! She broke ALL windows, the rear window, the headlights, the taillights all three rearview mirrors.

By now, I was screaming and crying for her to stop, but, Jack Nicholson and his movie ax has nothing on my mom! I mean, I was talking to her. I was stupidly thinking she was going to come to her senses, snap out of it, simply because that’s what I would have done?  This was unprecedented, see? Your guess is as good as mine, what she’d do next, though she did not threaten me at all, other than I better not interfere.

There was no swearing by the way. There was no explanation.  But what she did next, was the most shocking of all.

She took the ax and walked around the side of the house…. and then Holy Mother of God, she started chopping my father’s trees down.  Yeah. He had an orchard. Peaches, pecans, almonds, nectarines, plums… his prized trees.

I have to tell you, this became funny to me at this point on this fated afternoon.  I wasn’t rooting for her or anything like that, but my father was going to shit. It was as if I saw her logic. If you’re going to take on someone like my father, you may as well go all the way.

By then, it was clear to me, he was her target. She was not upset with any of the kids. This was personal. That said, I could not stand there and watch her destroy the trees. I also could not stop her, so I went inside the house to survey the damage. Shards of glass, everywhere.  Sure enough, every single pane of glass in the house was broken.

If memory serves, over 250 panes needed do be replaced. She didn’t harm anything else which was inexplicable or surreal or both. I mean, forget it.  My brain exploded an hour back.  Walking through the rooms of our house, my first coherent thought was, “What next?”

The first thing that came to mind was my father’s skull.  Was she going to split it two, with the ax? I didn’t think he’d stand for that. I was thirteen, by the way. I have Capricorn and it seemed to me, she had a precise plan.  This was a methodical operation! So after the trees, then what?

As it turned out, twenty-one mature fruit-producing trees lost their lives that day.  Some were left standing, because apparently, she wore herself out, chopping wood.  What did he do?

Believe it or not, my parents got along, much of the time. As a (hard and fast) rule, my mother was non-violent.  Can you see why I’m wondering?

Let’s just say, I withheld judgment.  I figured he had to have done something outrageous. She was sending him a message, as Italians are prone to do. She’d thrown down the gauntlet and she was good with it.  There was no collapse into a crying heap, or anything like that after it was done.  More like, payback, and if he messes with her, there will be more where that came from.

I wanted to know what he did, but I also did not want to know what he did, because, LIBRA.  I knew plenty about him as it was, as did she. I don’t feed off things like this. Left as is, I could deal with the situation and ultimately, this is the way it played. But I said, I’d tell you what happened to the Blue Streak. The answer is, very little.

W, decided to leave it as it was, and drive it to work so the people he worked with could be entertained.  He told them he took out the windows, for free Air Conditioning. He went along like this until he was stopped by the Highway Patrol, who told him he needed a windshield and rearview mirrors, by law. The rest was fine.

“What about motorcycles?” W, asked.

He learned, the Blue Streak could be driven without a windshield, so long as he wore goggles. He got himself a pair and continued to drive it.

Fast forward a few years, my parents divorced after 24 years. W, remarried and I got three stepbrothers and one stepsister.  The boys could see, sort of, but they were also legally blind. The youngest went to the deaf and blind school so my father had to drive him – no bus service to that school.  He’d continued to drive the Blue Streak, so he got my stepbrother some goggles. My stepbrother was a Pisces and quite funny and affable.  He liked the Blue Streak, but then the winter came and this kid weighed sixty pounds, soaking wet.

The wet part, mattered, because there was no windshield in the truck, remember?  Drive in the rain and guess what?

In the end, W, dressed him up, like a Fighter Pilot, exactly like Snoopy.  He had a leather cap and such, goggles and windbreaker over his clothing, when it rained.  He also had a giant blanket, which he wrapped around himself.

They got a kick out of this – why? Because they’re boys, I suppose.

I never got clear on what caused my mother to go off.  There was a wild accusation, that was denied.  But when it was all said and done, my mother would leave us Christmas presents on the doorstep… and also Christmas presents for the step-kids, after my father remarried.

My father has canceled Christmas some years prior. My mother wasn’t good with that. She felt kids should get a present for Christmas, so she made sure this happened.

Mighty righteous, if you ask me. Aquarius.