On December 30th  2025, my wife and I moved from Westchester, New York, to Philadelphia. We are at a point in our lives where the change made sense for a variety of reasons. I have been injured into retirement, and she is now working in what will most likely be the last position she’ll hold, closing out an impressive marketing career. Most of her work is remote, and I can certainly be a physical wreck in any setting as needed. We do not have a large or richly developed social circle, and our kids are no longer children themselves. The few people in my life that I had regular contact with will not be any more difficult to stay connected to if I call them from where I am now than where I was then. Except. Except that having spent twenty years of my life residing at an address without ever thinking of the surrounding environs as a place where I really lived, I had come, in the fifteen months preceding our departure, to feel as if I’d finally found a home.

I married somewhat late in life, at the age of forty-one. Prior to my marriage I’d lived in Brooklyn and though my mail got delivered to Westchester County, Brooklyn was still where I was from. Over the years my social interactions were largely limited to increasingly sporadic dinners with the few friends I remained close with and whatever incidental contact I had with the parents of kids that were in the same activities as my son. A few of the other little league and track dads were pleasant enough but there was never anyone I ended up thinking of as a friend. Coupling that with a one-hundred ten mile a day commute I think I was usually too busy to realize just how disconnected I’d become and too tired to care much on those occasions when I wasn’t that busy. The house I lived in was mostly a place I left in the morning and went home to at night. I was, and am fortunate enough to be in a loving marriage but the other elements of the richer life that I thought would be a part of my middle years were in short supply. I had a home but no home town. In time I made a peace of sorts with my circumstances and found consolation in recognizing that if and when it came time for my wife and I to relocate it would probably be an emotionally untaxing event. If we’d moved two years earlier that would almost certainly have been the case.

Amongst the litany of ailments that I hinted at in the opening paragraph, I suffer from what has, to date, remained a poorly understood and not specifically diagnosed cluster of neuromuscular symptoms in my right leg. I am prone to severe spasms in which all the muscles of my inner thigh can cramp with a severity matched only in its unpredictability. I’ve gone so far as to be seen at the Mayo clinic without any definitive diagnosis. If nothing else, I’m not in a position to bore the reader with a long-winded account of the issue. Suffice it to say that it can be excruciating and that for a long time, it seemed it was going to be just something to deal with as best I could. One of the management tools I used was a type of massage called myofascial release. The therapist I went to was not only highly skilled in his practice but also possessed a doctorate level education in kinesiology. After we reached something of an impasse in his hands-on treatment of my condition, he suggested taking a more active approach to what he felt was an issue which presented mysteriously but seemed to be rooted in a muscular imbalance of some sort. He knew that I was already putting a great deal of time into stretching and suggested that I try Tai Chi in addition. I didn’t think it would work, but my misery was fairly constant, and I was willing to try anything that didn’t actually involve human sacrifice. And that is how at the comically advanced age of sixty I found myself standing next to my wife at the back of the room in the Dragon and Crane American Chinese Cultural Center in Somers, New York.

My previous exposure to Tai Chi had been fairly limited. An acupuncturist that I saw when I lived in Brooklyn was a devoted practitioner and had on occasion shown me a few movements. He’d been patient enough to get me to understand the basic principles of the art form. Deep, grounded stances. A methodical shifting of body weight. Essentially, a disciplined, moving meditation which he swore had self-defense capacity as well as legitimate health benefits. I remember thinking, at the time, that I believed he was probably right, but I had no gestalt understanding of how any of that might actually work. In addition to his earnest, if not particularly fruitful tutelage, I had repeated random opportunities to watch groups of New Yorkers practicing this ancient dance together. There was always something about their uniformity of motion that was almost as intimidating as it was alluring. And that was fine. Watching an old Chinese woman moving gracefully through an early Sunday morning series of steps was another wonderful part of living in New York, that I could appreciate without really understanding. In that way, seeing someone deeply engaged in Tai Chi was not any different than watching a group of older Sicilian men dueling it out on the bocci courts at Marine Park. Tempers would flare, foreheads would turn purple and sweaty and at some point a tape measure would be produced, settling some argument over a game which I didn’t grasp in even the most limited way, but still understood to be of almost religious importance to them. Watching them intently, without knowing what it was I was watching, was, in its own way, a quintessentially Brooklyn experience. And then I graduated from the outside looking in, to the inside looking around.

Idling in the above-mentioned rear most row, awaiting the beginning of the class was a moment of some ambivalence for me. There was a part of me that had a real, if guarded hope that this new attempt to mitigate, if not cure my miseries would suddenly, magically, do just that. I’d already lived through years of frustration by then, so my expectations were limited. Also, I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, and we don’t do optimism very well. Along with my investment in a specific, therapeutic outcome I was harboring the nagging suspicion that I was about to make a spectacle of myself in front of a room full of strangers. Once things got going my fears were put aside, mostly by being realized. I did my best, which involved lumbering around in a fashion oddly reminiscent of Gene Kelly, primarily because Gene has been dead since 1996, and I looked like I might not be all that far behind. Still, I enjoyed the hour. As clumsy as I felt, the structure of the class allowed me to feel like I’d actually done something more than putting my ass print on my recliner seat and bemoaning the unjust way in which my body had betrayed me. When we were finished my wife and I had a chance to meet some of the other students and they were welcoming and encouraging in equal measure. Considering how inept I felt it was really nice to hear a few kind words. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone struggles their first day.” “County EMS has an excellent response time.” The most important thing I heard from more than one person was the simplest advice I could have received. Just keep showing up.

And so we did. Class on Saturday, practicing at home every morning. Week after week. As we passed the one-year mark, my wife stopped so that she could focus on finding a new home and performing at her new job. I’d stopped working by then, so I kept showing up. Over time, the work paid off. I could see and feel strength returning to my legs. My balance had improved dramatically. The form of Tai Chi that I was taking has one hundred and forty-three steps. but with two weeks remaining before we packed up and left, I was finally able to perform the entire thing for the first time. It was a remarkably satisfying moment for me. In the little over a year that I’d been attending classes I hadn’t spent too much time worrying about when I’d be able to complete the form. I just stayed focused on whatever I’d learned and tried to make some sort of improvement on whatever I already knew. In a lifetime flush with poor decisions made for one stupid reason or another I’d done the right thing, the right way. That being said once finishing became a possibility, I started taking two classes a week and made it with not much room to spare. It was a great moment and certainly will be a great memory of that place and my time there for the rest of my life. Still, I’m not sure it will be my favorite.

If I had to select one moment to treasure above any other from those Saturday mornings it could just as easily be about a classmate as it would be about me. Watching my wife perform by herself, the first time she completed the first part of the form was special. Seeing a veteran student be promoted to Sifu (teacher) after ten years of dedication was an inspiration. So was seeing the return of somebody I was sure would never be back. Those moments and more just like them are as apt as any other to be what I think of, when I think of that very special place where I spent my Saturday mornings. If I’m to be honest, though, there is one memory that does hold the top spot. It wasn’t learning something new or getting a little bit better at something I’d already been taught but had struggled with.

Driving home from the school on December 21st, 2024, I realized that in the three months or so we’d been taking class I’d never had a negative thought while I’d been in that building, with those people. That might not seem like all that big a deal to the reader but for me it was something unique. I have, what has proven as of now, to be untreatable depression. I seem prone to what professionals in the mental health community refer to as unwanted thoughts. The trip from the school to our house seldom took more than ten minutes, but that was long enough to understand that I had found, without looking for it, one spot where I was safe from the worst of me. Up to that point, and from then on, there was a place I could be in without wondering how much better the lives of my family might be if they’d never made my acquaintance. The building wasn’t really the story though. It was the people I met and practiced with there that gave me a place to hide. I was fortunate to be able to have them to watch, listen to, and learn from. As I finish writing this, I’m looking forward to making the drive up to New York tomorrow and taking a class. Deepest gratitude to all of you. You don’t know what you did for me. But I sure do.