Moving downtown has landed me right in the thick of things … and it turns out that the American Diabetes Association (the force behind the Tour de Cure, which I biked in last June for the first time) is just two blocks away. When Tour manager Jessica Rosa began contacting the early registrants for this year’s ride back in February, I was delighted to be able to apply some of my skills toward increasing visibility for the event.

One of my projects (in addition to starting a community blog featuring personal stories behind the upcoming Tour de Cure on June 5) was a press release tying the story of one of our Red Riders to the somewhat offbeat ceremony that is the Blessing of the Bicycles at St. John the Divine. The event was originated by Glen Goldstein in 1999, partly as a goodwill gesture to ease the rivalry between the Five-Borough Bicycle Club (billed as “New York City’s friendliest bike club) and the New York Cycle Club, which puts more emphasis on riding for speed and endurance. (Not that they’re “unfriendly” … but their annual “newcomers’ ride” will just about kill you if you’re really a newcomer.)

Cyclists arriving at the cathedral.

Even at St. John the Divine—a place that bills itself as “A House of Prayer for All People” (and where French high-wire artist Philippe Petit has been one of the artists-in-residence for decades)—it’s a sight that turns heads: as news trucks and camera crews lurk on the sidewalk below, several hundred cyclists carry their bikes up the cathedral steps and share breakfast pastries while they patiently wait to roll their wheels in through the massive bronze doors. A motley procession of messengers, recreational cyclists, racers, commuters, kids with training wheels—even one woman with flower-bedecked bike bearing a pug in a basket—parades in to the skirl of bagpipes, taking their places beneath the historic Gothic stone arches.

Waiting for the ceremony to begin.

For 13 years, the lovely 20-minute ceremony (performed with a gentle dignity by the Reverend Canon Thomas P. Miller) has remained essentially unchanged but for the fact that the participating cyclists now line the cathedral nave three rows deep on either side. No matter what our motivation for cycling, pointed out Reverend Miller, we were united by the fact that we coursed through the city’s streets powered by no internal combustion save for that within our own bodies—which is only a good thing, he noted, for ourselves and for the air quality of our metropolis.

The prayers are brief, but eerily resonant; does the Bible really mention cyclists?  A reading from Ezekiel offers the vision of great-rimmed wheels moving in tandem with the spirits of living creatures: “When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.”

Bless this sea of cyclists!

The highlight, of course—what everybody’s there for—is a sprinkling of holy water onto the bikes, as Reverend Miller glides efficiently down and back, hurling droplets over the handlebars of all present. (I wiggled my front wheel back and forth in a few drops of water on the stone floor, for good measure.)

The bagpipers (two in kilts; one in bike shorts) played as a riderless bicycle was escorted solemnly up the aisle, honoring the city’s cyclists who had been killed in accidents during the past year. After a moment of remembrance, the celebratory ringing of bicycle bells punctuated the Benediction … but surprisingly, no one seemed to notice that, as we headed out of the cathedral with our bikes, the tune that resounded from the great organ was “A Bicycle Built for Two”!

Soara-Joye Ross (in helmet) and Jessica Rosa before the camera.

Heading down the steps at the back, I broke into a huge grin when I spotted Soara-Joye Ross—veteran Broadway performer, “divabetic,” and personable Red Rider who was featured in my press release—dazzling a camera crew. Now, that truly was a blessing!

Up until now, every move has been to a bigger place. As my neighbors and I prepared for a mass exodus from our building on East 50th Street some six years ago, most of them obeyed the mantra. All kinds of stuff began appearing on the “give-away table” outside the laundry room: books, a blender, a lamp, ceramic bowls. Me? I was grabbing a lot of it … secure in the knowledge that my square footage was about to increase by 50 percent. Never mind the expense of having everything I owned packed and put into storage for a month in between apartments; this time, I was about to upgrade to a truly adult-sized abode, where I could entertain 12 people at a time without praying that nothing got knocked over. (Okay, so some things would be shoved into the bedroom, off-limits to guests.)

The sunny uptown living room empties out ...

Uptown, my capacious apartment with the 20-foot-long sunken living room began absorbing even more stuff: new furniture; cooking and decorating magazines; kitchen equipment and plants from a friend (who was downsizing for a move to a retirement community); glass, china, and family mementos from my mom’s house (and a good portion of her wardrobe); boxes of stuff I had accumulated in my office. Over the years, I found new places to tuck things, new ways of maximizing space. Okay, I’d never be a minimalist. So what?

But my new apartment at Penn South was going to be SMALLER.

You could say that the “one new thing” would have been to bite the bullet and downsize. And I tried; I really did. But under great pressure, I tend to get “clutchy” … it’s the worst possible time to de-accession, as I can’t make decisions and nearly everything seems a valuable part of either history or possibility.

A two-day tag sale trimmed less stuff than I’d hoped. Lots more went off to the Temple’s rummage sale (including a crewel coverlet that I spotted in a magazine a week afterward and turned out to be an antique worth $1,500 … THAT hurt!). My Nancercized biceps carried numerous stacks of magazines downstairs for recycling. But when a second-hand bookseller combed through my shelves and offered a few dollars each for beautiful, illustrated volumes, I balked.

"I'm going, too ... right?"

My plan was to transfer everything in the closets first, giving myself a head start with my closets organized downtown before the boxes and furniture arrived. I’d pack breakables and art myself for hand-transfer by car (and subway, each time I headed downtown), saving money on professional packing (and not needing to cushion everything as if it would be drop-kicked off a truck). The “big” movers would do the furniture, books and magazines, CDs and LPs, and file cabinet contents, and I’d pack as much beforehand as possible (with the help of a couple friends).

Sounds like a plan … right?

Have you ever seen that circus act where the Volkswagen drives into the ring, the doors open, and then clown after clown after clown gets out … until you think there can’t possibly be any more clowns, but there are?

That’s what my closets were like. In fact, that’s what my whole apartment was like.

It was endless.

Friends with cars offered me trips downtown when they could; one dear soul even rented a Zipcar to help out. The bemused doormen uptown lost count of how many times I waited in the lobby before scuttling out and though the curbside snowbank schlepping my big blue Ikea bags.

The movers worked away upstairs ...

On the day of the “big move,” the guys from Oz were heroic, especially with a January snowstorm complicating the proceedings. We were running late, and I called Penn South to alert them. Still, there wasn’t a single security guard around to man the door for 25 minutes after we arrived. I ran back and forth between my apartment and the service entrance, alternately holding the door for the movers and racing upstairs to guide them into my apartment.

After bending over backwards to obey the rules—not propping the door open in the absence of the promised guard; keeping hallways clear; and only using the padded elevator (despite the fact that people kept piling into it while ignoring the perfectly good one beside it)—I was rewarded by Penn South with the door shut in my face ten minutes before the 5:30 deadline we’d been given.

... while the truck awaited in the snow.

The furniture was in, but most of my boxes were still on the truck. In the ensuing half-hour spent haggling with security over whether we’d be allowed to finish (that night or the next morning … getting “no” to both requests, though I had been teased with “maybes” several times by staff who then walked off and disappeared), we could have actually finished. I was looking at three nights of overnight charges (not to mention that my plan for unpacking that weekend before the rest of my things came downtown the next week was dashed). Oz Moving was gracious enough to compromise on the overnight charges, displaying flexibility and intelligence in the face of unforeseen circumstances. Penn South, not so much. Tell me again, WHY did I think this move would be a good idea? I hated the place already.

Chaos in the kitchen as things get packed.

As my apartment emptied out uptown and poor Billy ran out of hiding places, he got creative. After a frantic search, I opened a base cabinet in the kitchen, bent down … and found him hunkered at the back of the shelf, gold-green eyes staring at me.

Still more trauma awaited: the beautiful, high-quality, expensive, queen-size futon couch I had carefully selected for my previous apartment—figuring I’d have it forever—had to be disassembled and dragged onto the snowy sidewalk after several potential takers had deemed it too big … and I had run out of time.

Waiting to exhale ... and unpack!

Did I mention rising at 5 AM my first morning downtown, to head back uptown and clean out the fridge before the tenants arrived? Did I mention having no phone or internet for weeks while I waited to be cabled for FIOS after the SNAFUed move? Did I mention waiting for my stove to be hooked up … the intercom directory to be programmed … my sanity to return? No? Come to think of it, this move made my previous one … the one for which I was homeless in between apartments for a month … feel like a giant pajama party.

Despite the odds, there finally came a day when everything I owned had been transferred downtown, and  “all” I had left to do was … unpack.

Well, no, I haven’t. In the past six months, I’ve appeared on television (MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show), joined the Five Boro Bike Club and gone on a weekend bike trip in Cape Cod, spoken about Meetup to a group of HR professionals, jumped into Facebook (after years of resisting), and shed 30 pounds (ya-a-a-ay!) … all of which I should have written about. But part of it is that I’ve been busy with the biggest, most unexpected and all-consuming New Thing of all: MOVING!

Some seven years ago, when I knew I’d be leaving my walk-up apartment on 50th Street, I managed to get myself on the waiting list for an apartment at Penn South, an affordable housing complex in Chelsea for people of modest means. This was a coup in itself; the waiting list isn’t opened very often, and when it is (publicized through an ad in the New York Times Real Estate section and an announcement on Penn South’s website), it’s by lottery. You send in a postcard and, if your card gets drawn, they send you an application. I got one, filled it out and returned it … and was notified that I was now number one-thousand-something on the waiting list for a one-bedroom apartment. “Great!,” I thought; “my number will come up just in time for retirement, when I’m wondering how I’ll afford to stay in the city. Meanwhile, I better get cracking on looking for a place to live in right now.” So that’s how I wound up in Washington Heights.

So ... would this turn out to be my new living room downtown at Penn South?

Over the past seven years, I’ve logged into the Penn South waiting list and watched my number inch along up to five-hundred-and-something, so I figured it would be another seven years or so before I heard from them. But in September, I received a letter informing me that I should call for an appointment to look at several apartments … and I just about freaked!

Uptown, our part-time doorman, German, makes coming home to the Heights a joy.

Though it seems like the Back of Beyond to some of my friends, I’ve loved living near the Cloisters. My apartment is enormous, quiet, and has leafy river views. Fort Tryon Park is practically my backyard. And over the years, I’ve built up a varied and satisfying community — making friends in the building, through the fitness walks in the park, through volunteering, and through the temple. I love the fact that I can’t walk by a restaurant without waving at someone inside, can’t go grocery shopping without a sidewalk chat along the way. Sure, the A train has been a pain in the butt … but it’s the price we pay for space, fresh air, and life in a neighborhood that has all the virtues of a small town that’s (technically, anyway) 20 minutes by subway from Columbus Circle. Wouldn’t I be nuts to give all this up? I didn’t want to move … especially when the continuity of that community plays a big role in sustaining me during unemployment.

The view from my window in Washington Heights.

But life takes unexpected turns … and I wouldn’t even have landed in lovely Hudson Heights if I hadn’t been willing to step outside my comfort zone when presented with an opportunity to make change work for me.

Having lost my job and watched my monthly maintenance climb, part of me knew I had to give serious thought to this … even if it didn’t seem likely that I’d actually GET one of the apartments available now. (Some people on the list were waiting for apartments with terraces or on high or low floors, or had temporarily “frozen” their positions; others had probably moved and forgotten to update their contact information … which is how I even got called in the first place. Even so, four people ahead of me would have to turn down apartments now for me to snag one — fat chance!) But a few weeks after viewing, I got … THE CALL.

Carefully arranged ... and now, along with a thousand other things, it all has to be dismantled for a move!

How quickly can life turn upside-down? I had just made my breakfast and sat down at the dining table. Now, telephone in hand, I looked around at all my books, records, furniture, plants, artwork, china, pottery, clothes, papers, electronics … and the cat! … and tried not to panic as I realized that somehow, by hook or by crook, it would all have to get relocated eight miles downtown — in about two months. I was one-quarter excited and three-quarters terrified, and took a deep breath. Then another ….

Ready to ride! Photo: Ken Snyder

Both my parents became diabetic later in life; I’ve been told by my doctor that I’m headed down that road myself if I don’t do something about my weight (which I am). But mostly, the ride was just a challenge I wanted to meet as a new cyclist.

Okay, so I wasn’t starting out from 54th Street at 6:30 a.m. and biking all the way up to Stony Point (as were the 100-mile riders) … or beginning at 7:30 a.m. and heading up to Dobbs Ferry (the 55-mile route). I wasn’t even riding up to Inwood, as were the 30-milers. But the 15-mile circuit—which took us downtown to SoHo and across Worth Street, up the East Side, into Central Park as far north as 104th Street, around and out of the park at 90th Street, and then back down the West Side to the pier on 54th Street—felt challenging enough to make me drag my butt and bicycle home (on the subway) feeling like Lance Armstrong.

A pre-ride warm-up. (Yup, that's me: No. 168!) Photo: Ken Snyder

After checking in at 9 a.m. and affixing our numbers to our shirts and bikes, we were led through a brief warm-up (primarily stretches) before heading out in a cloud of excitement.

And they're off! Photo: Ken Snyder

Riding in Manhattan traffic is not my forte … and had it been my first time, I would have been a little freaked out. (Some 641 riders participated, not enough to qualify for lane or street closures.) But there’s safety (or at least visibility) in numbers, and I wound up with an escort of volunteers partly through an embarrassing accident. Barely out of the gate and stopped at our first traffic light, I whipped out my camera to document the moment.

Our first stop light... the photo that cost me a tumble once we started up again!

When the light changed faster than I anticipated, I struggled to put my camera away with one hand after we’d taken off … and tumbled off my bike onto the road, splat! Camera and body were intact, but my bike’s brakes were jammed tight, and I had visions of being knocked out of the game before it had even begun. But thanks to the repair efforts of one of the volunteer escorts riding along with us (whose name, alas, I never got), I was back in business after about 20 minutes … and still not too far behind.

The pace of these congenial riders was a good match for my own, so I followed them for the rest of the course; it was as good as having my very own personal OnStar. There were some very cool-looking arrows at various points along the way indicating our respective routes (depending on mileage) that I was so tempted to capture in a photo … but knew better than to risk life and limb, and waited until I spotted some at a point where we were well out of the way of traffic.

Colorful arrows show riders they're on the right course. (Ours is the green one.)

Once we turned up the East Side, there was no shelter from the sweltering late-morning sun, and my lone water bottle was quickly depleted. As the combination of strenuous exercise and allergies turns me into a mouth-breather, I was becoming dehydrated as well as overheated, and knew I wouldn’t make it three more miles uptown to our only official rest-stop. At my pleading, we stopped at a vest-pocket deli to buy water (a move that the entire group appreciated), and I downed one bottle and stockpiled another. Semi-refreshed, we forged on uptown to Sutton Place, where a tent—set up with orange slices, water, fruit-and-nut bars, and ADA-approved sports drinks—awaited us (and where I ruined my cheap watch when I gratefully plunged my arms elbow-deep into the ice-water in which the drinks were floating).

Our "official" rest stop ... as welcome as an oasis in the desert!

After a decent break that brought my core temperature down to something resembling normal, we headed west and into Central Park. It was nice to ride without cars for a change, but now we had hills to deal with … and the “biggie,” which I had successfully climbed twice before without having to dismount, proved just too much in 89-degree heat (and with 10 miles already under my belt). I admit it: I walked my bike up … and welcomed another rest at the top afforded us when our fearless leader stopped to aid another cyclist whose tire had blown with a loud explosion while he was taking the hill.

Exiting the park and heading back down on the West Side, I finally felt (with just two more miles left) that we were within sight of the goal, despite the hottest afternoon sun that I had ever ridden in. Exactly three hours after we’d started, I headed back to the pier, past the whistling and clapping welcome committee (whose whoops I returned), and dismounted to grab myself a vitamin water and a lunch bag. The biggest treat afterward? A mini-massage by one of the students from the Swedish Institute who had massage tables set up to unknot our aching muscles!

Bless the students of the Swedish Institute, who provided massages to tired cyclists!

Would I do it again next year? In a heartbeat! I’m hoping I can go for the 30-mile route. (And thanks to everyone who helped sponsor my ride; you were all with me in spirit as I pedaled along!)

The Green Machine (as I call my Jamis Citizen hybrid cruiser) was intended to be my ticket to fun and fitness from the get-go … but it didn’t quite work out that way. Just a month after my first two rides (over the George Washington Bridge, and around Central Park) with a kind fellow who responded to my posting on the NY Cycle Club bulletin board for someone patient enough to accompany a new rider, a foot inflammation put me out of commission. The following spring, I got back in gear and was beginning to enjoy jaunts down the Hudson River Greenway when a fall on a stone staircase in Ft. Tryon Park put me on crutches for a week (and into a lengthy course of physical therapy for a badly sprained ankle). Once the ankle healed, my knee began acting up.

Early spring view up the Hudson from the colonnaded pavilion alongside the Greenway ... a great rest stop.

Only in the past few months have I been able to spend enough time in the saddle to gain a modicum of strength and confidence. It was embarrassing being a perpetual beginner for awhile … but at least now I can zoom downhill on Margaret Corbin Drive without keeping my brakes on the whole way; slip past the lamppost in that narrow spot on the Greenway without holding my breath; and manage the long, slow climb from the Dyckman Street entry to the colonnaded pavilion overlooking the Hudson without panting like an overheated dog. (Well, okay; maybe a little.)

Not yet strong enough for serious group riding, I nevertheless hooked up with the Inwood Cycling Club recently for a jaunt downtown and around Central Park. There were eight of us; I was both the oldest (something I’m entirely used to, having worked 15 years among college students) and the least experienced (something I’m pretty much resigned to, whenever cyclists gather). It’s an informal group; the people are friendly and the pace is manageable.

Central Park was very crowded on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, and somehow I had gotten separated from the gang even before I got stuck behind a barrier waiting for a break in the boisterous stream of AIDS walkers. When the barrier slid aside and I resumed pumping my way through the pedicabs, in-line skaters, dogwalkers, and other bicyclists, I realized that my sense of direction had long since disappeared. Was I still going south, or was I now heading east? Was I already on my way back north? (Ha! No such luck.)

Lunch stop at Dinosaur Barbecue ... hard to resist!

The sight of a friendly young fellow handing out free bottles of vitamin water was as welcome as an oasis in the desert—a good excuse to pull over, catch my breath, figure out were I was, and chat for a couple minutes. But it turned out to be more than a simple pit-stop; it actually generated a semi-crazy idea.

The real purpose of the water handout was to attract recruits for the Tour de Cure, a fund-raising bike-ride in New York City on June 26 for the American Diabetes Association. The bottles were accompanied by a brochure about the event (which had options for rides of 100 miles, 50 miles, 30 miles … and 15 miles). “That’s do-able!” I thought to myself, not even realizing I would have ridden that much by the time I got home much later that afternoon (never having reconnected with the group, alas). Of course, I made some stops along the way, including one for a burrito lunch in the middle of a street fair on my way home. There wouldn’t be the same kind of stops along the Tour de Cure, and I’d have to keep up. But since it was about a month away, didn’t that give me enough time to get stronger? Hmm … I’d be committing myself to ride rain or shine, hot or hotter. Could I manage it?

Well, I signed up!

Click here to visit my personal Tour de Cure page, and please consider making a donation to support my ride. Let’s get in gear (sorry, bad pun!) to beat one of the most insidious diseases in this country.

I’m pretty sure ice cream figured into it. Last summer, it was my drug of choice. The Mister Softee truck parked at the south end of Margaret Corbin circle, just above the entrance to the A train, provided a sweet send-off when I headed into the subway (or the park) and a welcome home when I came out. But a daily cone habit is extravagant on unemployment, so I eventually turned to the supermarket, picking up whatever half-gallon was on sale. I could get about three days out of it if I restrained myself, and it was usually about three dollars.

Fitness in Ft. Tryon Park. Photo: Aliza Holtz

Ice cream consoled me not just for my lost job, but for the fact that severe knee pain barred me from the morning fitness walks in Ft. Tryon Park and bicycling down the Greenway—two things I had counted on to keep me sane through those first months of unemployment. Of course, if you can’t exercise, the solace of ice cream is unwise … but let’s just say wisdom was in short supply last summer.

Way back when I had begun working at Juilliard, I lost 30 pounds without even adjusting my diet when I returned to thrice-weekly ballet classes for about a year. Several years later, when my weight had crept back up, I dropped my triglycerides by cutting out pasta and bread, and hitting the salad bar for lunch. But now, even though I’ve returned to an exercise regimen that includes the aforementioned fitness walks along with 10-mile bike rides, the scale isn’t budging. Fish or chicken, veggies, and brown rice for dinner three nights running? Steady. Have dessert? Gain a pound and a half. (Wait—in one day?) Even more alarmingly, I’m still huffing uphill and upstairs after weeks of exercise. This isn’t good.

I suspect that yo-yo dieting and encroaching middle age have conspired to hijack my metabolism and transport it into the fifth dimension. I’m also finding it’s just too darn hard to tackle this on my own anymore. The solitary lifestyle of a freelance writer suited me just fine 20 years ago; now I seek the structure and communality of a full-time position. Likewise, I could stick to my own eating plan when younger, relying on life’s momentum (as well as the satisfaction of seeing the scale go down three pounds a week) to stay on track. Now, I need some determined compatriots in this strange new terrain, as well as someone to make sense of all the rapidly evolving research on nutrition and the intersection of brain and body.

Enter fitness instructor and health writer Nancy Bruning, founder of Nancercize and leader of those morning fitness walks in Ft. Tryon Park. When I returned to the walks after several months’ absence, I was astonished at the transformation of some of my cohorts, and it wasn’t just from walking. They had participated in Nancy’s Transitions program, and here were the dramatic results right in front of my nose—way more convincing than those “results not typical” diet ads! Through a program of low-glycemic eating (something my own doctor has been a proponent of), exercise, behavior modification, and stress reduction, they had lost fat and built muscle, increased their energy, and (in at least one case) lowered their risk for heart disease and diabetes. And what’s more, they seemed to have had fun doing it!

Now, I’ve never been much of a “joiner.” But when Nancy begins her next 12-week session on June 14, I’ll be there … as will my “best bud” from my building. Maybe it’s just a matter of the right thing at the right time, in the right place. But I’m serious about stopping my downhill slide and want to make a commitment to health part of embracing “new things”!

If you’re curious, check out Nancy’s web site. You might want to join our group … or gather a few friends, and Nancy will come to your part of Manhattan to lead a Transitions session!

I’ve never been one for entering contests—but, in fact, that’s exactly what applying for a job is. Think about it: you do your best to supply the winning answer, the cleverest and most convincing solution to the puzzle or problem, and hope that the judges vibrate on your wavelength and recognize your brilliance above all others. How can you not drive yourself crazy trying to second-guess them?

I actually knew the answer to this question when I was six. In first grade, I was handed a sheet of paper and a big, soft pencil. Our teacher explained that one student’s artwork would be featured on the program cover for the school-wide holiday pageant; we would now work on drawing pictures for consideration. My passion then was drawing horses on carousels, every chance I got—and this was not a chance to be passed up. In a nod to the holiday theme, I added a holly leaf in each corner of the page and striped the poles like candy canes. When the teacher collected our sheets, I never thought about it again.

About a week later, I was summoned to the principal’s office … and made to understand that I was not in trouble, but my carousel had been selected from drawings submitted by hundreds of students in every class, from the first grade through the sixth. I was too young to explain to my mother what had happened, though I tried. She only figured it out in the school auditorium, with the program in her lap.

I thought about this—and the spelling bee I won in sixth grade, spending my prize money on a small oil painting at the Niantic Art Show, which I still have—when Symphony Space ran a contest two weeks ago that prompted me to recapture that “do it for fun” spirit. The theme of the upcoming Selected Shorts event was “Apartments and Neighbors,” and a pair of tickets would be awarded to “the person who writes in with the most humorous or horrific story about their experiences with their apartments, landlords or neighbors.”

Now, other New Yorkers might have moved more often, but I have a talent for moving. And my last move was a doozy, requiring me to be homeless for a month in between apartments. I figured that if I didn’t win the contest, I’d still get a good blog post out of it. A move is, after all, the ultimate embrace of the new. How dizzying it was to lie on the bare wooden floor of my new apartment as it was being painted, staring up at the ceiling and realizing that these strange walls would eventually come to signify “home” for me as surely as those of my last apartment, their every bump and angle intimately known after 20 years.

I sat down and wrote. As a frame of reference, I traced the ascending curve of my moves, beginning with the first (in a Checker cab) and ending with the five-man, two-van, warehouse-in-Brooklyn saga. The challenge was getting it all into 500 words … but I managed to hit “send” about ten minutes before midnight on the day of the contest deadline. I went to bed tired but satisfied; I had done my best and had a great time in the process.

Guess what? I won. (Click here, and you can read my winning entry on the Symphony Space blog.)

Now that I look forward to the companionable routine of Thanksgiving with dear friends who live in my building (close enough in terms of both location and friendship that I can return the next day for leftovers), I can laugh at some of the more oddball Thanksgivings I’ve known: a vegetarian dinner for 80 people in a Manhattan ashram that was covered by Channel 2 news; hotdogs and ice cream sandwiches grabbed at a showing of “Crocodile Dundee” somewhere near Pomona, California (because a friend and I were starving just two hours after the perfunctory midday meal served at another friend’s retirement community, and we drove for miles without finding anything else open).

Passover has proven to be a bit more problematic. I’m not religious enough to have many close friends who observe it; the few who do are too far away, as “real” seders usually end well after midnight and the next day is almost always a work-day (if you’re not religious).

The first seder I ever attended in New York (in 1976) was at the home of Sylvia Straus Heschel, a pianist and the widow of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and it was led by their daughter, Susannah. A four- or five-hour seder with copious feminist commentary, led by a young woman my own age, was nothing short of an eye-opener; my family’s seders had always been strictly “by the book” and led by my father.

A dozen or so years later, I was inducted into the rowdy Passover rituals of my next-door neighbor’s cousin, an actor and mask-maker, which included much wine-spilling and macaroon-hurling. Eighteen or so mostly theatrical types squeezed in around two tables pushed together; I recall that one year, we read portions of the Haggadah in “rap” style as we went around the table. The cousin’s marriage brought Passover decorum for a couple years; his divorce returned the proceedings to their usual mayhem. I eventually stopped going when it got to the point that I needed to head home at 11 before having eaten anything other than matzoh-ball soup.

In contrast, it was a disappointment to discover that another friend’s mother’s idea of a seder was a 20-minute dip into the Haggadah before serving dinner. Still another “seder” I was invited to actually left off after the first page!  Where were the plagues, the pharaohs, the four questions, the visit from Elijah, the many rabbis with unpronounceable names? While everyone looks forward to the meal, it’s not the entire point; the word “seder” means “order” or “sequence.” Recounting the story of Passover and honoring the struggles of our ancestors (as well as those of people yet enslaved around the world) evokes a powerful sense of connection to generations of humanity. Jews have been sitting down to this annual ritual for thousands of years—and, in many cases, risking death to do so. How lucky we are!

While Passover is one of the few times that I crave tradition, I have come to embrace the expectation of something new most years. (After all, the Jews were facing the unknown as they hurried out of Egypt.) As a seder orphan, I turned to All Souls on the Upper East Side, and found the Unitarian Universalist seder to be a gracious balance between tradition and modernity. A few years later, I somewhat ashamedly found myself hinting broadly (just hours before the start of Passover) that I had no seder to attend that night, and was generously folded into a lovely gathering that included the four questions asked in several languages, as well as the Persian Jewish tradition of whacking each other with scallions before singing “Dayenu,” to remind us of the whips of the Egyptian slave-drivers.

Last year, unable to afford the seder at my own Reform temple, I was directed by a friend to another local communal seder that turned out to be attended almost entirely by elderly Russian Orthodox Jews who spoke minimal English. Rather than panic, I resolved to turn it into an adventure. What I remember most is the courtly gentleman to my right whose eyes lit up at the chance to practice his English. At one point, he laid his hand on my arm and leaned forward, signalling the readiness of a sentence he had spent several minutes composing in his mind: “I live in Moscow for 76 years, I never feel free. I live in New York one year,  I feel free!” How can you beat that for embrace of the new?

The past year has brought its share of tribulations, and the deepening of new friendships as I face them. This Passover I was thoughtfully invited in advance by one of those friends and found myself once more enveloped in three generations of family, a treasured cross-stitched tablecloth beneath the seder plate and glowing candles. Three of the people I knew, four I didn’t—and all of us felt like good friends by the end of the night. With any luck … next year, again in Washington Heights!

Anyone who’s talked to me for more than five minutes knows that I adopted a cat last summer, my first in 15 years. My previous cat had been put to sleep at age 21; what with a new job, two moves and two kitchen renovations, and a long-distance relationship, it never seemed like the right time to get another. I had gone through putting four cats to sleep within nine years (since I’d had three at one point) and didn’t think I could face that again—plus, after catering to and cleaning up after an elderly kitty for years, I seriously needed a break.

But last year I began to feel the pull of furry, whiskered little faces. I told myself that cat-sitting for neighbors was enough to get my “fix”—but late at night, I found myself browsing Petfinders and the ASPCA’s website (which felt like an online dating service, with its perky, first-person descriptions and little videos of prospective matches playing, being petted, or shyly blinking at the camera, all seeming to beg “pick me, pick me!”). It was just too overwhelming.

When the New York Cat Coalition held an adoption event in front of a local pet supply store, I told myself I’d wander by “just to look” and was taken with a youngish male brown-striped tabby, though I was hesitant. I’ve always adopted cats directly from previous owners who can tell me quite a bit about them, so I know I’m getting an “apartment cat.” Rescued felines are a bit like a “mystery gift”—you never know what you’ve got until you open the box at home.

Fostering for a rescue group is a good option: you can see if you’re really up for this, and can “test-drive” the kitty in question to make sure you’re both happy. (Some folks believe you get what you get, like having kids; I think of a cat more like a partner you wouldn’t marry without dating first.) So I took the plunge.

The tabby, whom I too-presciently named Nudnik when I thought I might keep him, turned out to be like that cartoon version of the Tasmanian Devil, tearing insanely around my apartment, biting my ankles, leaping up from behind when I least expected it to sink his claws into me and then run away. He’d go from purring on my chest to gashing my arm within seconds. After a month, I’d had it. I felt terrible—like somehow I’d failed—but my friend Carole reassured me that I was making the right choice. “You’re genetically programmed to love cats,” she said, “and there’s some deserving kitty out there who really needs you and will appreciate you.”

To my relief, the woman from the rescue organization understood completely … but the night before Nudnik was retrieved, she begged me to try another brown tabby, same age, who’d been found on Fordham Road in the Bronx and just neutered about two weeks ago. “He’s a love!” she assured me. Poor Billy was skinny as a rail, and they had no room for him; he was sharing a cage with two kittens. So call me a sucker.

Long story short, as they say: Billy is my constant companion, often stretching out beside the computer with his paw on my arm as I type; he waits until my feet hit the floor in the morning to yowl for food. He charms visitors, shaking hands for a treat, and sleeps curled up against whatever body part of mine he can rest his chin on. My friend Liz’s reminder echoes in my head: “Don’t give up just before the miracle occurs.”

Just getting into the building was a challenge: I walked blocks out of my way (thanks, HopStop!) and circled around multiple entrances before finally locating the public one and submitting to a security check; my mom’s necklace set off the metal detector. Then I sat down on a bench and waited, figuring (based on the agency’s briefing) that I’d be able to spot my interviewer because he would be escorted by someone.

Several minutes later, a strikingly handsome man with the trim and taut physique of a marathon runner (which I later found out he was) approached me with only the slightest hesitation and held out his hand. He was alone, and I followed him as he turned and whisked me through the lobby and into the elevator to his office. After a comfortable chat, I was introduced to the means, both human and mechanical, by which he navigates his complex work. So as to get the feel of our pace and interaction, he had me read from a multi-page document with sections, subsections, and sub-subsections, indicating when I should wade through the explanatory paragraphs or jump ahead. As I wrapped my mouth around the unfamiliar, bureaucratic language, working to enunciate and keep it flowing, I was aware of how much someone’s inflection could smooth or obstruct even the simplest of sentences, and thought about how most of us take for granted being able to skim something and process it without the filter of another person’s comprehension. When it became apparent that half the document had failed to print, he sat down at the computer to find out why; a special software program magnified the part of the screen that was inches from his nose. I thought of how often I’d felt like pulling my hair out when a technological bug brought my work to a standstill. If he was frustrated, he never showed it. There was no accounting for the glitch, but as I flipped back and forth between pages, he determined that the printer had stopped—luckily—just after the material he needed. His watch announced the time. A friend of his arrived to pick him up, and the three of us headed into the elevator, joking and laughing; they strode through the lobby and I rushed to keep up. Outside, we shook hands and expressed mutual pleasure in having met before heading off in opposite directions. It wasn’t until I had swiped myself through the subway turnstile at Chambers Street that I glanced at the Metrocard I had hastily purchased from a vending machine at the 190th Street station earlier—and gasped. On the back was a quote from Schopenhauer: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” And I had just met someone who treated his own limits of vision as nonexistent.