These past forty days, approaching fifty, since younger brother’s birthday, it’s still a maddening puzzle of piecing together odd moments here and there: door blown open twice in the night with name Georgia on mind in morning, an attic cover inexplicably dislodged, the missing date and time of a shouting dream (especially as a light and forgetful dreamer). But even with only sketchy pieces, one thing comes to focus which has always been true about his birthday, only now surfacing to personal notice: his nativity is fifty days before the feast of nativity of St. John the Baptist, which this year in Pacific Time ends with Venus station direct and Neptune newly retrograde.
He is also John, named for a grandfather’s brother, who was known by the middle name John, but whose first name was Toivo, an old Finnish name (first documented use in 15th century) meaning hope. There’s a well-known writer by that name who admired Jack (born John) London’s work. Toivo Pekkanen broke out of his own working class roots and made his living from writing.
As this Mercury station retrograde day wanes, it ends filled by the name John: husband in passing mentions for the first time a nickname only his father called him, one with an Irish lilt from the elder John to his middle son and namesake John, and the same name husband passed on to his own son.
John comes to mind as the name of the street we walked everyday to grade school.
And via Twitter a playwright named John becomes a treasure trove for that week of pieces and those that followed: images, reflections, vivid dreams. In one, the day before we received news of our John one month ago, he dreamt of smoking a pipe with the taste and smell so vivid that he bought one, an actual pipe, for himself.
Wednesday, June 24, 2020, Long Beach, CA, 23:48 PDT:
Moon 24° 03′ Leo quincunx Pluto 24° 13′ Rx, Jupiter 24° 41′ Rx Capricorn
Elpis 15° 17′ Rx Sagittarius biquintile Uranus 9° 39′ Taurus
Ceres 12° 25′ conjunct Pisces 11° 19′ rising
Venus 5° 20′ Gemini station direct
Image: Elpis (reverse side) holding flower and skirt (284-285 AD) via Wikimedia.