Some of my fondest memories revolve around food.
Our parents took me and my sisters to a restaurant called Patricia Murphy’s most every Thanksgiving. The waiters would carry baskets full of homemade popovers that were still warm from the oven. I loved poking a hole in the beautiful brown outer crust to let out the air and reveal the fluffy dough inside. We’d slather on butter, which would melt the moment it hit the popover. The warmth of the restaurant; the scrumptious, steamy popovers; the chill of a November day and being with my family made me feel secure.
I was determined to be a good cook when I got married, at 21. Douglas and I would have Saturday night dinner parties at least twice a month and I’d serve dishes like Chicken Kiev, Beef Wellington, creme brulee and poached salmon with hollandaise sauce that I prepared from scratch. I’ll never forget the time the sauce curdled twice on the last step and I poured it down the drain and started over.
I always loved when our friends enjoyed my dinners. We had many funsy evenings. The twenty somethings I know today don’t have dinner parties.
Edgar and I enjoyed big salads for lunch on Saturdays, followed by bags of fresh popcorn from a place called Stew Leonard’s. We’d wash it all down with way too much wine. Then we’d cuddle and nap. It was romantic, sexy and reassuring at the time, even if Edgar turned out to be a world class creep, cheat, and pathological liar.
Mary Ann and I adored bigorneaux (tiny, tiny snails) the first time we tried them in Paris. You use straight pins to coax them out of their shells. Sometimes, they refuse to budge, no matter how much poking you do. Mary Ann and I enjoyed them again when we went to Paris in mid November.
When FOF sister, Shelley, arrives at work in the morning, she makes coffee for both of us. Even though coffee is not exactly as delectable as warm popovers, fresh popcorn, poached salmon, and bigorneaux (in Paris), being with Shell is what makes it taste extra good.
I tripped while I was walking with my beautiful daughter, Simone, yesterday morning–we were on our way to check out a new discount clothing store on upper Broadway–and landed face down on the sidewalk. Blood was gushing from my head but I had no idea where it originated. As I assessed whether I was intact–teeth ok? Check. No broken bones? Check. Nose and eyes ok? Check– Simone ran into a grocery for napkins and a small crowd of women gathered to offer me handkerchiefs, tissues and conflating words. Not a man in the group.
The weapon
After a few minutes I was able to get up from the ground and determine that my upper lip, inside and out–was pretty smashed. FBI agent that I am, I soon realized that my face had landed precisely on top of the chunky ring on the middle finger of my right hand and the ring had cut the lip clear through to the outside. I thanked the lovely group of women as Simone and I got into a cab and headed to to the ER at Mount Sinai hospital. We were closer to Lenox Hill but I would have left there in a body bag so I opted for a real hospital.
After making sure the fall had not caused anything more severe than a mangled lip, a fabulous PA (physician assistant)* cleaned the wound and meticulously stitched the inner and outer upper lip (I stopped counting after about 12 stitches). It was nice to clutch Simone’s hand for comfort. After the novocaine wore off, I popped three Tylenol to reduce the discomfort. The lip is swollen, but I can eat (thank heavens). The PA gave me a prescription for antibiotics.
Barry at work
We don’t know what’s going to befall us when we wake. I’m grateful the ring didn’t puncture an eye, I didn’t break my jaw, any teeth, wrists, arms or legs, and I’m not dead.
I tripped a few months ago and escaped with only some bad bruises. I was wearing floppy moccasins then, and today I was wearing boots with thick rubber souls that caught on an uneven edge of sidewalk. I’ve got to walk more carefully and wear different shoes.
I was at a party a few months ago where a man slid on the marble floor and went flying. A FOF woman in the drugstore told me that a fall she took a few years ago caused her to bite through her lip. And Simone said a young co-worker broke her jaw and had 119 stitches after fainting in her apartment a few weeks ago.
I’m grateful I’m still in one piece, more or less.
Looking especially lovely today!
Merry Christmas to my FOFriends and their families. Stay safe.
P.S. PA Barry Johannes asked if I wanted a plastic surgeon to do the suturing. ”You’ll probably get a junior doctor with hardly any training,” he explained, but wanted to give me the choice. I opted for 40-year-old Barry, who seemed confident about performing the task at hand.
I am embarrassed when I contrast the minutiae that often consume many of us with the gigantic problems others face throughout the world. While applying makeup this morning I listened to news about the flash floods in the southern Philippines that have killed 1,000 so far. The victims didn’t exactly live luxuriously in the first place. When fires swept through Topanga Canyon in Malibu, CA. years ago, many residents lost their multi-million dollar homes, but not their lives. They also were blessed with friends and neighbors who could take them in, as well as funds to rent new homes while they built even bigger residences to replace those that disappeared. I am not saying I didn’t feel awful for the Malibu victims (one of my oldest friends being one of them), but I am saying that hardship is relative, don’t you think?
Coffins for the dead in the Philippines
Sharon, one of FOF’s two talented designers, saw a “homeless” man huddled outside this morning and quickly decided to buy him a bagel and orange juice at the nearby bagel shop. “I felt sorry for him, so I also gave him $5 when I handed over the bag of food,” Sharon recounted. After walking across the street, she turned around to see the man throw the bag into the garbage. “He didn’t care about eating. He probably wanted the money to buy alcohol or drugs,” Sharon surmised. “I felt so used.” The man is clearly in need of help, whether or not he devoured the bagel. I still admire Sharon for lending a hand, rather than buying herself a bagel and studiously avoiding him. Hardship is relative, don’t you think?
Coffins for the dead in the Philippines
Peace, safety, good health and joy to all my FOFriends and their families during this holiday season!
I am going to make a big confession that relates to a fact I learned today: Over 70 percent of people surveyed by WET, which makes a line of intimacy products, said they consider holiday parties a good opportunity to hookup and 44 percent of respondents confessed that they, or someone they knew, hooked up with a coworker at an office holiday party.
Now for my confession: Many moons ago, at a company-wide Christmas party, one of the top executives at our parent company invited me back to the fancy NYC hotel where he was staying (he lived a train ride away from the office, but I guess he figured he’d engage in some hanky panky) and attempted to have sex with me. I say attempted because he was pretty inebriated and didn’t perform quite as well as he did at work.) After our quasi-liason, he prompty fell asleep, and I proceeded to hot foot it home.
We had dinner weeks later and another date, I believe. We were attracted to one another–mentally and physically–but we never “hooked up” again. He was very much married (in an eighties corporate executive kind of way) and astutely realized that he’d better not fool around with an employee who reported to one of his direct reports. I did manage to learn that he disliked my boss almost as much as I did and would never name him president of the company (which was my boss’s fervent desire.)
This being a small–no, tiny–world, I met a man recently who was a good friend of my Christmas party hookup with my boss’s boss. I learned he had retired and was living back in the Midwest, from where he hailed.