MATTEO: Can you cut off the cru— ME: I am, I am.
I cut the crust off the sandwich and am about to cut it in half when Matteo shouts.
MATTEO: NO!
ME: What?!
MATTEO: （meekly） Can you cut it in triangles?
I sigh.
ME: Jesus, you scared me.
MATTEO: Sorry.
ME: Just two?
MATTEO: Two what?
ME: Two triangles.
MATTEO: Ummmm. Yeah. Yes. Two. Please.
I cut the sandwich into two triangles, plate it, and pass it to Matteo.
ME: There you go.
MATTEO: Thank you.
ME: You’re welcome.
A silence. I watch my son eat greedily.
ME: Wow, you were hungry.
Matteo nods, cheeks swollen with sandwich. I smile. After a moment he speaks with a mouth full of food.
MATTEO: What are we having for dinner tonight?
ME: Pasta with tomato and peas.
MATTEO: Awwwww, nooooo!!! Do we have to!!?
I roll my eyes.
ME: Well, why don’t you go next door and see what the neighbors are having?
Matteo sighs dramatically. I smile.
To be continued…
for generations to come all around the world…
Some Thanks.
Today, as I type this, I am almost completely healed. （I ate venison the other night, a little more slowly than I once did, but I ate it and I, well… I loved it.） Thanks to Dr. Bakst and his team, including Bethann Scarborough, the head of palliative care at Mount Sinai; my friends; my family; and especially my wife, Felicity Blunt. After two and a half years, many scans, many workouts, and lots of beans, I have a clean bill of health. Fortunately, after three years, the likelihood of this type of cancer’s returning is very low, and the chances of its ever rearing its ugly head again drop precipitously with each following year. I would also like to thank my dear friend Dr. Niven Narain at BERG for his help in seeing me through it all.
During my recovery, I was so lucky to have our nanny, Martina Domanicka, and my assistant, Lottie Birmingham, with me, Felicity, and Matteo in New York, as well as Andrea Galik, who looked after Nicolo, Isabel, and Camilla in London. All three of those women went above and beyond to support us through what I hope will be the most difficult time in our lives. Without them and my loving in-laws Joanna, Oliver, Susie, and Sebastian, Felicity could never have coped with a newborn and a bedridden husband as she herself was recovering. And even though Felicity was supposed to be on maternity leave, she still spent a lot of time working from home because she felt she was shirking her responsibilities to her clients. She was and still is utterly indefatigable. I hope my “showbiz” agents and manager are reading this and learning. But I jest. I would also like to thank those agents and my manager, Tony, for being so understanding and encouraging.
How can I ever thank my parents for being so supportive from afar and when they visited after Emilia was born? I know seeing me so frail cannot have been easy for them. And thank you to my sister Gina, who came to visit me during treatment to cheer me up, and my sister Christine, who, from her home in LA, was always so positive and encouraging.
Thanks also to: My loving friend Alison Benson for housing me when I first arrived in New York for my initial tests, and my cousin Joe and his wife, Robin, for doing the same. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Emily and John, selflessly let us stay in their gorgeous home in Westchester during my treatment, ironically right near where I was raised and from where we had only moved four years before. This was an act beyond kindness for which they should be beatified. （I have been told that I can’t personally beatify anyone, so I have made a few overseas calls. Seems it might be a bit harder now because of Brexit, but I am working on it.）
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, who gave us their stupidly tasteful New York apartment for two weeks during the time Felicity gave birth so that we would be closer to the hospital. And I don’t even know how to thank Ryan for being with me on the day of my first scan. I was, and still am, so happy that he was there. Our dear friends Oliver Platt and his wife, Camilla, housed Martina and Lottie during that same two-week period. Without their generosity I don’t know what we would have done.
So many friends came to visit me in the hospital or on weekends to try to lift my spirits, which was not an easy task, although I know it made the doctors and nurses very happy to have a parade of well-known beloved actors traipsing up and down the ward on occasion.
When I returned to London, a person who looked like Colin Firth would check in on me almost daily or take me to the hospital for checkups and sit with me during hydration sessions. His support was invaluable.
When I was able to exercise again, our friend and Pilates teacher Monique Eastwood and our trainer Daryll Martin patiently helped me regain muscle and restore me to the level of fitness I had previously reached and then some!