Hold my hand, walk with me, laugh in 17G
It was a bright, very cold day. After speaking in Miami that morning, I landed at JFK and found a text message from Emma who had landed just minutes before.
We were in different terminals, but she had been met by my editor from Globe Pequot Press, Mary Norris, and was on her way to meet me. It felt like a finely orchestrated scene in a movie, Emma walking toward me with a woman standing behind her in a fine big Russian hat with a copy of Life is a Verb as her "sign."
We had just enough time to get into the city, drop our bags at the Roger Smith Hotel, and walk to the famed Algonquin Hotel where we met the publisher and other executives from Globe Pequot Press for the first time. We talked about book projects and book titles and Oprah Winfrey's new network and the vagaries of book sales and awards, all while I was remembering Big Early Moments with Mr Brilliant in that very same bar. The compulsion to channel Dorothy Parker was high.
We walked to the Millenium Hotel for a cocktail party and then to the Books for a Better Life Awards ceremony, authors surrounded by their publishers in anticipation. In a beautiful red theatre, the ceremony began. I didn't have long to wait, since my "category," Inspirational Memoir, was the first announced. A lovely video presentation of the finalists made me feel like Kate Winslet or that nicely talented Meryl Streep but without the jewels, the money, or the gowns. And the winner was Randy Pausch's bestseller, The Last Lecture.
"I don't like his book," my mother had said the week before in defense of her daughter. "It's too depressing."
"Books about fathers dying before the age of 50 and leaving behind young children usually are," I responded.
While my mother (and Mr Brilliant) still fervently believe that Life is a Verb should have won, I could see no other reasonable alternative than this posthumous award to a man whose runaway best seller was not only a tribute to his children and the piece of him they have left, but sparked a renewed focus on living for enormous numbers of people. And as my friend Jeff so gently said when he heard the news, "'Only chance' trumps 'first chance,' I suppose." And so I watched Pausch's widow accept the award and knew in that moment that there had always been only that outcome.
(During the awards ceremony I vowed, solely on the basis of his achingly beautiful acceptance speech, to read Daniel Gottlieb's LEARNING FROM THE HEART: Lessons on Living, Loving, and Listening)
Mostly, the awards ceremony was a fantastic excuse to spend a few days in New York with Emma.
We walked, and walked some more. We toured Pratt as a possible college for Emma (WHAT? SO SOON? NO!) and found a NYC mecca for Emma called Kinokuniya, a three-floor Japanese bookstore. 
We ate lunch with fantastic 37days readers at Lily's Restaurant and were surprised by a bottle of champagne from the manager! We saw a breathtaking play, "August: Osage County" that made us feel better about any tiny family dysfunction we might have (just sayin') and walked some more. We found the datebook I so desired. And then we got up at the crack of dawn and headed home in seats 17F and G.
Thanks for all your good wishes for the Books for a Better Life awards. It sounds trite, but it's very true–I am so honored to have been one of the finalists with this little book that came so deeply out of my heart for these two girls, one of whom sat holding my hand during the ceremony. 
