March Maddness: The "Tip-Off"...

This month, this March '09, my friends, was the most wickedly odd month of the year thus far....and we are just exiting the first quarter...what kind of year lies in wait? Well...whatever...March is a great month, you know, finally a peek of sunshine through that winter cloud cover....asparagus and artichokes begin appearing on my Sunday dinner menu...which means that morels and ramps are mere weeks away...And aside from the fact that I pull out my flip flops and strappy shoes no later than March 14th for their 7-month-long stint as the center of my wardrobe, the weeks of March are chock full of fun and celebratory events...birthdays, drinking holidays and college sports tournaments rule the social scene...and I love the social scene...and usually, it likes me too....

So, as I mentioned last week...Suse and I are headed off to Longboat Key later this week for a girls' weekend...a little "welcome spring" gift to ourselves...we are good mommies and we work hard...and we deserve a few warm days away with nothing but 180 degree views of the Gulf of Mexico, the salt air, delicious cocktails, country club lunches, 1905 Salads and kickass shopping...but most importantly, we need to perfect our radiant, sunkissed bronze glow for the barelegged spring/summer fashions that lie ahead...And so, we have both been running around crazy-like, making sure all of our ducks are in a row...all of the loose ends tied up...and of course, to make our mark on the fun events that have kicked off the season. There was ADP's fun and fabulous surprise 40th birthday party....good friends in a sea of black dresses, yummy drinks and me in my 5-inch high heels, flying high on my YAZ buzz, dancing to "867-5309"....(For a good time, for a good time ca-aall....), and "December 1963 (Oh What a Night...)"...(Seemed so wrong, but now it seems so right...) with all the girls (Trish J., by the way, an absolute non-stop dancing machine...such a fun partner in crime....). So my toes hurt for three days post-event...totally worth it. Anyway, there have been other great moments over the weeks...the surprise dinner at Park Steakhouse for Nancy's 40th, with Tim's amazing 32 minute slide show/photo montage of Nance over the years...so many fun moments we laughed about that night (Winter's Dawn, anyone....? How about The Shocker???)....So at any rate, I have been having such fun...and I have been thinking that we are so lucky to be surrounded by such a great group of smart, cool, interesting, attractive and accomplished friends...my surprise (hint, hint...Dad? Rob? Cath?...anyone???) 40th birthday party (in 6 years...) is looking so good from here if all of you continue to stick around, you know? So save the date!

And you know, we can be a dramatic lot too....which brings me to the happenings of this last Friday afternoon...how quickly a seemingly low-key, diversionary chat around the kitchen table can take a turn, right? And how said turn can reveal your strengths and abilities....or in my case, lack thereof.... So....

Suse and I were in her kitchen catching up on the day's happenings, playground chatter and all that....rounding back on the week's events. Suse's little girl was asleep on the couch and her son was outside playing street hockey with the neighborhood kids. My brood was at home with their dad...after school playdates in full swing. And while we chatted and placed calls to some of the other "desperate housewives" on the phone, Suse was preparing her selection for that evening's gourmet girls' dinner -- a cheesey-creamy-herby potatoes gratin and some little tomato tarts, delicious, bite-sized mouthfuls of puff pastry, tomato, basil and gruyere that Scott had just delivered fresh from the grocery store....and she is prepping and grating cheese and measuring cream...and to cut the potatoes, she was using a state of the art mandolin, the classic French culinary tool that slices foods paper thin in a sliding motion and makes an appearance on almost every episode Top Chef and Tyler's Ultimate and The French Chef...so it is a familiar tool to those of us who love to cook...or are food porn addicts (mmm...Tyler Florence...delish...)....but that doesn't mean it should be used by amateurs....And I was there chattering and gossiping at record speed while Suse sliced...and my conversation was peppered with warnings: "that mandolin is sharp...be careful!"..."you are making me nervous..."....."use the hand-guard..."..."pay attention to what you are doing..." And Suse is nodding along..."I know"...."You're right...."....."My mom always says that too...." Ugh...ugh...I have chills running up my spine recalling...

Ok, so as I am yapping on the phone, covering the latest goings-on with Trish, I hear Suse gasp sharply and wince. I look over and she is grasping her middle finger in her hand....her eyes the size of saucers...and I say:

"Did you cut yourself?" and I am totally using that "I told you so" tone...

"Yes...." she says

"Badly?" I am getting nervous...

Realization sets in...

"I think I cut my finger off...."

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????

I start yelling and freaking out and I hang up the phone...and Suse is dazed and she tells me we have to find the missing piece. Oh Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the Saints...please, please let this be a dream. But it isn't....because at that moment she pulls away the towel that is stopping the blood and shows me her wound....the middle finger on her right hand...only half of the tip remaining. It is that very moment in which my brain completely lost all sense...like I was losing air or something...I feel like I am underwater....and her eyes are still as big as saucers...and I say: "Keep the pressure on it..."

"Is it still on the mandolin?" she asks...the severed piece, she means....and we find it there, still attached to the blade...and I silently praise Jesus that it is a smaller piece than I expect...and we put it aside while I go get her some ice...and she is starting to cry and begins to panic as she is calling for Scott...so I help her and we are both yelling: "Scott! Scott!" and as he makes his way up she says: "I cut my finger off on the mandolin..." And he begins freaking too...and I cannot put thoughts together...I grab ice from the freezer and wrap it in a paper towel and I ask Scott if I should call the ambulance corps....and that is when Suse tells me to call her sister, Lisa H. of the Mallomar addiction, which I do while she runs out the front door yelling for her neighbor, Cindy N., who also happens to be an emergency room nurse at our local hospital. Well...at least Susan was thinking... Scott and I continue to gape at one another...our brows knit and faces drawn. I stand in the kitchen, feeling helpless....so it occurs to me that should I put the puff pastry she was planning to use for the tarts back in the fridge...as if that will make some sort of difference...like, oh good, Suz, so glad you thought to save the puff pastry...too bad Suse bled out while you focused on that...Bravo!

Thank God for Cindy....because she came in an took over....she calmed us all down with her no nonsense, nurse-y manner...she sat Susan down and sat with her, putting pressure on the wound. And she asks me to give her the extra piece...and I have no clue what the hell we did with it...and I am searching amongst the bloody paper towels and potato shreds...and I am hovering above myself wondering why I am so inept...why I cannot do a g*ddamn thing to help...Finally Cindy comes over and finds the piece, which she wraps in a wet towel....And that is when Suse's blood pressure takes a dip....she is as pale as a ghost and we have to lay her down on the kitchen floor. I ask Cindy if I should call 911...and she assures me that we don't need to...So I ask if I can make a cold compress, would that help? And she tells me to go ahead...and I know she was just trying to keep me occupied so I didn't further bungle the situation, like the nervous dad in the delivery room...So, of course, it just gets more ridiculous...

I ask Scott for a dish towl and he says that they don't have any....and I am confused but I ask if there is one in the bathroom instead...and he brings me a bath towel...not washcloth size or even a hand towel...oh no, instead he hands me a giant bath sheet...big enough to wrap around the both of us. And I stand there holding it, wondering how small I will need to fold this thing up so that I can make a useful cold compress out of it...And even Suse is aware how stupid Scott and I are both being...and from the floor she says..."the dish towels are in that drawer next to the sink..." And I find one there and I wet it and I bend down and hold the towel on her forehead...and I am trying not to cry while I cool her down...and I look at Scott and he looks at me and we say nothing...but I take note of his skin tone, which I can only describe as a tepid shade of chartreuse...

Oh God...I couldn't be a bigger screw-up if I tried...I would try to blame it on YAZ if I could, but I actually think this idiocy-in-urgent-circumstances thing is actually a Ritt family trait...Well, not previous generations -- God knows Gramps, the MacGyver of York and 84th, and my Grandpa and Grandma McKenna, the NYC firefighter and delivery room nurse, would have swooped in and started making things happen...the rest of us, not so much. It must have started with Uncle Freddy and Dad...I think that may be when this gene mutation took hold...I mean, we Ritts are dynamic and all...and we can make a damn good joke and string words together and captivate a room and captain teams and run companies and trading desks and write books and make friends and throw parties and create dead-on nicknames and spew some righteous putdowns and all that. And...well...we can be very loving...sometimes too loving and giving of ourselves, surprisingly...But even though Dad saved a guy with the Heimlich once, most of the rest of us are not who you'd want around if you need poison sucked out of a snake bite...

So once Suse's blood pressure comes back, a flurry of activity follows...Cindy calls the ER, we make arrangements for the kids, Scott starts the car and we throw the bloody mandolin in the sink....And as Suse is led to the car she says: "I am sorry there won't be any potatoes tonight...but I guess they wouldn't have been so great with pieces of my finger mixed in..." And I know she is attempting a joke...so I say: "Well, we couldn't have eaten it that way...it's Friday and it's Lent -- no meat allowed, Suse." And we kind of giggle a little and I give her a quick hug before I drive off with her son...As soon as I pull out, I am on the phone to Rob, instructing him to step in and act as prep chef so that my shrimp gratin will be ready to go for my group later on...Oh yes, of course I was still planning to partake in the gourmet girls' dinner....

I looked at my watch....11 minutes had passed since Suse cut her finger on the mandolin...I was stunned, it had seemed longer...so, again we learn that in seconds, things change...

And I think that must have been the lesson this week...in seconds our lives can change. There were big things that brought that home -- the beautiful, talented mom and actress -- a theatrical goddess -- slips on the ski slopes and is dead hours later...and we all asked: "How could this have happened?"....And also this week, mere days past her fantastic 40th birthday, my dear ADP lost her dad, her hero, Handsome Harry...whom I never knew, but mourned along with her...and to whom it is thanks that I will never forget the capital of Cameroon...(Yaounde, you dummies...)...And then there was Suse's finger...So all of that made me rethink my reactions to the trivial happenings this week that seemed so important at the time, but really were not...like when my beloved pumpkin-colored phone fell off my lap and into the bubbling warm water of my pedicure...and when I argued with a friend over semantics (YAZ again, I swear!)... and then when I made Ellie cry because I loudly and ferociously protested the outfit she had chosen to wear on a visit to her cousins in Delaware...You know, and here I am, getting slapped upside the head over and over with example after example of bigger losses, greater tragedies...which put it all into perspective...

So...I guess this is one lesson that we should never lose sight of...the small things are exactly that...small...that we should go out and get what we want...do what will make us happy...surround ourselves with people who truly, madly, deeply love us...and whom we love back.

So, Suse showed up at the girls' dinner a few hours in...and she was all hopped up on Percosets and novocaine and her finger was all wrapped up and it kind of looked like a bloody Poppin' Fresh/Pillsbury Doughboy (an homage to the puff pastry I saved, maybe???)...And she brightened my night, I was so glad she was doing better and her color was back....and best of all, her fondue hand wasn't going to be permanently damaged...But I especially loved when she confirmed my wild recounting of the events and the validity of my ineptitude to the entire group...And you know, I was happy to own my flaws...because, really, what is the alternative? I am flawed but lovable, right...we all are, and it is so cool that we are all here to enjoy that in one another...because in seconds that could change...

And we don't want that...you know, for many reasons, of course...because I love you, for one....But also, if nothing else, we don't want to miss out on that kickass surprise 40th birthday party my Dad and sisters and husband better be planning for me in six years...you know, I am thinking the City in a loft with signature cocktails and dancing and flowers and dim lights and dark corners and food by Rocco F&*%ing DiSpirito (dude owes me one....) and I am telling you, I want every one of you there with me so we can celebrate, not the undeniable miracle of my 40 years, but the seconds we have together still...And even though it is six years away (I know, the joke is getting old...but please indulge me this one fantasy....), I am counting the seconds...

All my love...every second...Suz

PS  In memory of Lawrence...on what would have been his 39th birthday....miss you so much...every second...

Photo 1: My haul from this Sunday's Spring Farmers' Market....pork bellly and artichoke risotto on the menu...

Photo 2: Columbia Restaurant's 1905 Salad (sex on a plate...yes, this salad can make you hot...) and a chilled pitcher of Classic Mojitos awaiting Suse and I on Longboat Key...

Photo 3: Me, ADP and Suse (pre-maiming) hogging the dance floor....I think I hear "Jessie's Girl" playing...

Photo 4: Nancy celebrating 40 years with a little lemon meringue...In background Dana definitely texting Freddy and Tim: "What excatly is The Shocker?"

Photo 5: Bloodless, skinless, flesh-free potatoes gratin...needs salt...

Photo 6: The Weapon of Mass Destruction...but it does slice a nice scalloped carrot, that's for sure...

Photo 7: Well if nothing else the puff pastry came through the drama without incident...

Photo 8: Archangel Cindy...

Photo 9: Look how helpful I am with my crafty cold compress and how happy Suse is to be missing a digit...I definitely missed my calling...

Photo 10: Freddy Ritt and I, circa 1979....I am pretty certain there was a fire blazing in the kitchen that very moment...good thing Gramps was there to save us all...Love the vintage can of Bud next to Uncle's Thanksgiving plate...only the best for we Ritts!

Photo 11: Suse and me...thank god I left that pristine white blouse at home last Friday...

Photo 12: Beautiful Natasha: RIP...

Photo 13: Suse's two and my three...whom we truly, madly, deeply love....LBI, June '08

Photo 14: Suse...rightly so, giving me "the finger"...looking kind of giddy there...those Percosets are working hard, baby...

Photo 15 and 16: Only a small selection of the Hot Jersey B*tches who will no doubt be gracing my Surprise 40th Birthday Party...boys, you may want to leave the wives at home....