Covid, Cake and Cadlewax: A Thank-You Note

Fifty-first birthday, 51 days after the coronavirus (anagram: carnivorous) started snacking on my cells, five straight days of feeling pretty decent. Sounds like time for a slice of cake, a word of thanks, and a wish for better days ahead—for all of us. So: a word and a wish to my wife and my son who, though they too were sick, were there for me through every anxious day; to my friends, ever relentless with their good wishes; to the doctors and nurses who saved my skin not once but twice. Those knights in pale PPE not only brought me through a six-day Covid-pneumonia sojourn at the hospital but also through a post-Thanksgiving return trip to the ER, when the virus had hacked its way into my neurological and gastrointestinal systems and written an unpleasant code all its own. (I’ll leave it at that; this is a family show.) That second trip was, thankfully, not an overnight stay, but I was sent home with new meds and marching orders that got me through a bumpy fortnight, my own little Wimbledon with its own small victory. Five straight good days! What can you do but drop to your knees and look to the sky? You shake your opponent’s hand—“Well played, Covid.” Then you wash your hands, ready for whatever comes next.