July 5

Who you are

You are the person who asks the old relatives questions while they can still answer. Where the family came from, what the argument in 1978 was actually about, which of the cousins stopped speaking and why. Everyone else assumes there is time. You have noticed there is not, and you have a box, or a folder, or a phone full of recordings to prove it.

You are careful with what you have collected, which surprises people who expect sentiment. You will admit the grandfather everyone romanticises was difficult to live with. Accuracy matters to you more than comfort, and you have learned that a family holds together better on the true story than on the polished one. The Moon gives you the feeling; you supply the discipline.

Your gifts

• Careful labelling. You add the name, the year and the place while somebody is still alive to confirm them.
• Long recall. You hold decades of family detail in order, and you can find the relevant piece on request.
• Unsentimental sorting. You can keep the important letter and throw away the rest without agonising over it.

Your shadow

Somebody has to carry the past, but you took the job without being asked and now resent it slightly. You do all the remembering, all the arranging, all the phoning, then feel invisible when nobody else seems to care. The archive also becomes a place to live. It is easier to organise people who are gone than to ring the ones still here.

Your soul work

Your work is to keep the family legible to itself, then live in the present tense. Ask for help with it, out loud, and give the story away while people still want it. What you save is only worth saving if somebody younger ends up holding it too.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The fourth sign carries the gift of deep feeling and fierce care, and the lifelong lesson of the shell: protection that must not become a prison.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

Check a friend's day, or your partner's, and send it to them.