Lovely Rita

Since I don’t celebrate Christmas, the way I’ve learned to deal with feeling left out and lonely is to play as many Beatles albums as I can from the minute I wake up on Christmas day till about 9 p.m. I crank up the volume and blast their music, singing along throughout the day and night until I’m so hoarse I can barely talk. Playing Beatles albums is my one and only Christmas ritual, and listening to them helps me forget about not getting presents, being apart from my kids, and not eating the yummy food that I imagine the rest of our Christmas-celebrating world is pigging out on (and I’m not).

This morning I sang along as I cooked breakfast, stopping to cha-cha and twist when the music moved me. I harmonized along with John and Paul as I segued into baking sugary desserts, mashing avocados for guacamole, and getting ready to take the food and myself to our early afternoon eat-a-thon at our friends’ house. This means I had to cut my Beatles-playing a bit short, but I didn’t mind, because I got to spend the rest of the day with my pseudo-grandkids, T and R, their aunt M, and both devoted (but exhausted) parents. I sat on the floor and played dinosaurs with T, kissed and hugged R so she’d sing and smile, and I swear, being with the smartest and most adorable pseudo-grandkids in the world made me one happy little non-Christmas-celebrating clam.

Speaking of clams, our friends cooked up a huge pot of paella, packed to the gills with fresh cherrystones. I’ve never had the nerve to make it from scratch, myself, but maybe it’s time to reverse that fear, because I’m a paella-lover from way back. I first tasted it when I was a student hitching through Europe in 1968, and I ended up in Madrid, because a friend of mine was an exchange student there for the year. I ate paella every, single afternoon at a tiny restaurant that made it to order. Since it took a loooooong time to cook, we’d drink sangria to fill the time, which means I was always more than tipsy by the end of the meal. After we’d finished stuffing ourselves, we’d stagger out and spend the rest of the afternoon lying around the swimming pool at the University of Madrid. I was usually so looped I can now barely remember whether I was sober enough to swim. But, my taste memory of that paella is still with me, thank you very much.

It’s past 9:30, I’m done singing and digesting my paella, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo are officially silenced for another eight-days-a-week year. To all you reminiscers out there - have a happy, healthy and merry.