(Snippets from the frontline)
COVID-19/BLM: Celebration
My parents loved baseball. As civil rights workers in New York, they were Brooklyn Dodger fans, always knowing when pitchers and catchers were reporting to start Spring training!
Forced out of New York in 1954, my parents moved to Los Angeles with their beloved Dodgers following them in 1958. In those days without COVID, they occasionally got front row “cheap seats” high above home plate and the press box, so we got used to judging fast balls and curves and even picking off coaching “signs” from this nosebleed altitude.
Over the decades, it got harder for my mother to negotiate steps, then one day she had to be physically carried up the aisle relegating her to watching games on TV.
Recently, she had her 99th birthday, reminiscing how lucky she has been: “I was born one year after the last pandemic ended. If I was born one year before, pointing at herself, I may not have been here!” Then smiling and pointing at me, “and you too!”
After our small COVID birthday celebration as I was leaving, she characteristically asked, “Do you know when the pitchers and catchers report?”
Always a Dodger fan! Happy birthday mom!
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
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