Today is National Essay Day, so I sent out a message on social media to my readers saying that anyone that sent me a Beatles themed essay, I would post it on my blog.
The follow essay was sent to me by Tracy Neis. Tracy is the author of the Mr. R – A Rock and Roll Romance (Rock-and-Roll Brontes), which reimagines the Brontë sisters’ novels with a British Invasion Era twist. She posts book and movie reviews on her blog.
I was born the day after the Beatles recorded “Love Me Do.” I’ve always found the timing of these two events to be significant. My arrival on this planet coincided with the Beatles beginning their recording career. Our stars are aligned.
I was too young to appreciate the band when they were still together. My only clear memory of hearing their music back then was when a local radio station blasted “Here Comes the Sun” after the solar eclipse in early 1970. I didn’t fall in love with the group until I was eleven. But once I fell, I fell hard.
I started playing guitar, using a Beatles songbook as a guide. Sketching pictures of the Fabs improved my drawing skills. Listening to their albums brought me incalculable relief as I dealt with the pressures of adolescence. Paul and Ringo’s cheerful optimism lifted me up, and John and George’s fuck-’em-all attitude carried me through.
And then John died, shortly after I started college.
I won’t try to explain here how much his murder affected me. Suffice to say, it marked a clear delineation in my relationship with the band – before December 8, 1980, I lived in hope that my favorite group might someday reunite. After that horrible day, the Beatles represented a part of my childhood that was forever gone.
That’s not to say I didn’t keep loving them. But my life went on. I graduated from college, moved away from home, and left my collection of Beatles LP’s behind at my parents’ house. (I relied on a few homemade mixtapes of my favorite tunes when I needed my Beatles fix.) I worked at a number of jobs. I got married. I started having babies.
Before long I was in my thirties, living in California, the mother of three beautiful girls. The radio in my van was permanently set to AM 710 – Radio Disney. My only regular connection to the Fab Four was occasionally pulling out my VHS copy of Yellow Submarine to entertain my daughters. Then in 1998, I became pregnant once more. Late in my second trimester, the baby died.
It was a horrible summer. The miscarriage left me numb. My husband was between jobs, so money was tight and we couldn’t go visit my family out east. The California sunshine beat down on me relentlessly, offering neither the respite of a sympathetic rain shower or a shady spot to slip into to drink some lemonade.
And then a small miracle happened. A local radio station that was changing hands announced that during its two-week transition-of-ownership period, it would broadcast an all-Beatles format. I switched my dial and tuned it. And the sadness slowly started to lift. The all-Beatles station became a surprise ratings hit, and the new owners decided to keep the format going for a few more months. By the time the station finally switched over to a Big Band playlist, I had asked my sister to send me my album collection from Cincinnati.
The boys were back in my life, just as they had been when I was a teenager.
The years went by, now once again set to a Beatles soundtrack. Then my life took another dark turn. In March of 2015, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I underwent the usual invasive treatments – chemotherapy, radiation, surgery. I was fortunate to have a fantastic medical team and loving family to support me. But I also had another set of wingmen in my corner, who played a major role in my mental recovery – the Fabs.
Throughout my months of treatment, I would lie on my living room couch, too weak to get up and put on a CD, and sing Beatles tunes in my head to bring me solace. I quickly discovered the band had written a song to fit almost every emotion I was going through. Some of their comforting songs are obvious (“Let it Be”), while other numbers reflected my fear (“Help!”) and general frustration (“Don’t Bother Me”).
But many other tunes sprang to mind as well. Waiting for a specialty pharmacy to deliver a super-strength anti-nausea drug to my doorstep (my local Rx wasn’t licensed to carry it), I daydreamed about “Doctor Robert.” Then after the drug took affect (it not only settled my stomach but set my consciousness reeling), I “turned off my mind, relaxed, and floated downstream.” Neuropathy settled into my feet, and I found myself singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” whenever I needed someone’s assistance with walking. Ringo’s cryptic line about the car crash victim who was late for an appointment (“and you lost your hair!”) made me smile through the tears when I looked in my mirror each morning. And the endless diarrhea that came hand-in-hand with the chemo? Lennon’s “Old Dirt Road” (with its line about a mudslide) became my mantra when I took up residence on my toilet.Thinking about the band members themselves also brought me comfort. When I contemplated my diagnosis and prognosis, my thoughts gravitated towards George, who fought his own brave battle with cancer. When I worried about my family coping with my illness, I thought of Paul, who lost both his mother and wife to breast cancer. When I suffered bad reactions to the powerful drugs my doctors prescribed, I thought of John (you can probably guess why!). And when I looked towards my recovery, I envisioned Ringo, who conquered childhood illnesses and mid-life addictions to become the picture of health in his ‘Golden Years.’
As my treatment was winding down, my husband drove me into Hollywood for Ringo’s annual birthday celebration outside the Capitol Records building. I’d had a follow-up MRI that morning and was still wearing my hospital ID band. Before Ringo left the stage, he tossed rubber bracelets into the audience, inscribed with the words “Peace and Love.” I caught one.
The two bracelets I received that day symbolized the dual healing forces in my cancer journey. I keep them both in my closet, in a box on top of my old Beatles LP’s. I look at them every once in a while when I need a little pick-me-up. But more often, if I’m ever feeling down, I just start singing Beatles songs in my head. Their music helped me survive my adolescent angst, my miscarriage, and my struggle with cancer. At this point, I’m pretty confident their songs can carry me through anything else life throws at me too!
About 3 weeks ago, I got an email out of the blue from a J Nowik asking me, “Where can I mail the latest boolevards cd for review?” That was both the subject line and the body of the email.
Again, a book has moved me enough to post a review of it. I started reading this book on Monday and finished it by Wednesday. In fact, I was trying to get yardwork done and failed miserably because I had to keep picking the book back up to see what happened next. My bookmark was a hang tag from my new raspberry bush! This book should be on everyone’s Beach Book and Summer Reading List.
Sometime last year, I decided it was time to break away from Beatles Freak Reviews and start moving in another direction with my life. Writing reviews just wasn’t making me as happy as it used to do. It seemed as if I needed to get back to listening to the Fab Four instead of reading about them day in and day out. I was still getting emails from various publicists and authors asking me to read their books, but nothing really caught my eye until an email about 
Beatles-Freak's Reviews 