Thinking of Irene and the many occasions we have been together, what comes to my mind is the New Year´s Eve dinner party she attended, initially in my house in Madrid and later in my brother-in-law´s.
Those macro dinner parties were organized to the glory of the Cortes family, my in-laws. They are members of a family of 10 children which together with their spouses, close friends and children made up a pack of some 35 to 40 people. I had to cook for all of them every year. Some 26 years ago (I remember that Laura was a small girl) I claimed the possibility of inviting to the event some of my brothers and sisters( the Alvarez) and after some negotiation I obtained a package deal by means of which I was allowed to invite my sister Charo and her family.
When I called Derek to invite them he told me
“My mother has come to visit us”
“No problem”, I replied, “bring her along”
I had already met Irene and I knew how sociable and easy going she was. There would be no problem on that side of the question.
Nonetheless I had a secret concern for two different reasons:
What happened in the first of the long series of those dinner parties on New Year´s Eve is that the concern number 1 dissipated right from the beginning. Irene and the Cortes tribe mixed as perfectly as gin and tonic water. As a matter of fact they adopted Irene as the grandma.
My in-laws are very nice, life enjoying people, as Derek can confirm. All of them are generous people ready to help if one needs them. They sing very badly but as far as concern number 2, Irene seemed not to bother much about it. That proves the very good manners she always had. In my case after no more than 3 hours with my in-laws I need to get reclusion in a Zen monastery surrounded by the deepest silence money can buy.
I want to refer now to a particular ceremony we always perform at NYE.
I have lived in many countries in different continents and everywhere the New Year is greeted by a simple countdown of the las 10 seconds of the dying year, followed by the explosion of champagne bottles corks, kisses, hugs and shouts of Happy New Year.
We, in Spain, are more sophisticated than that, at least in what precedes the kisses, hugs and Champagne.
Right before 12 midnight we gather around a TV set broadcasting from the closest thing we have in Madrid to the Big Ben. We do it with a bowl containing 12 grapes.
As the clock bell tolls 12 times we are supposed to eat our 12 grapes before the tolls finish. If you do, tradition assures that your new year will be successful.
Some people prepare the grapes by peeling them off or removing the seeds (breaking the grape in 2 parts is foul; there must be some continuity in each fruit). Eating the complete set of 12 grapes in the allocated time is no easy task, I assure you, even with the technological advance of seedless grapes.
Irene, lacking the training we all had had since our infancy, systematically failed in her task. Apparently her record was established at 6; very poor. And yet, every year she tried again.
We will miss her. Irene had become an essential part of our Christmas landscape