Boston Strong

Hi.  Long time no chat.  Lately, I've been playing a strange game of baseball in my life involving a massive number of curve balls.  Ones that change you, take you to dark places and make you re-evaluate what really matters.  I haven't been in the mood for chatting. Or cooking. Or saying pithy little quips.  Things have started to look promising again, though, like I am gaining some perspective and getting back to my old self.  I am learning how to swing into those knuckle balls and curve balls.

April 15th was Marathon Monday here in Boston.  It's a state holiday here in Massachusetts known as Patriots' Day - in honor of the Battles of Lexington and Concord fought in 1775, which lit the fuse on the American Revolution.

I decided to work from home to take care of some tasky things while managing to get all my professional "to dos" done as well.  That morning, about 10:30 or so, I went to the corner of my street to watch the first wave of runners pass by.  My apartment is right on the marathon route, but in all the years I've lived in Boston, I've never seen it run.  As I snapped some shots of the runners on my new camera, I was amazed by their physical and mental strength.

There they came, at first it was just a trickle. I saw the female winner at the head of the pack, looking like this was just a walk in the park.

Then the gates opened and the cacophony of feet hitting pavement became deafening.  All a blur of bright shoes, sinewy legs, and conquered obstacles.  There were charity teams and first-timers.  Germans, Swedes, Kenyans, Irishmen, Venezuelans and "Captain America."  One thing I saw on all those faces was determination.  By the time I saw them, they were already eight miles in to their 26.2 mile morning jog.  They doled out high fives to the neighborhood boys cheering them on and waved to the crowd as the enthusiastic cheers swelled with each new wave of runners. Only a handful had even broken a sweat.  Many were carrying on conversations with their running partners without missing a beat.   How have I missed this the last seven years?

That was before...then, things changed - in two flashes.  Something we never expected, something that horrified us all.   "My friend lost her nephew."  "Her niece lost a leg."  "Two roofer brothers are now double amputees."  So many stories.  They all began to bleed together, staining the News Feed of my Facebook page and filling my attempts at sleeping with night sweats and horrible, gruesome images.

No one wanted to go into work.  Many of us stayed home that next day and watched in silence as the horror of the bombing unfolded in front of us in a 24-hour news cycle.  I work on the 19th floor of my building in the Financial District, two miles from the bombings, but we're right near the courthouse, a major train station and a fire department.  Anytime we heard sirens, the hairs on our necks stood up.  We were all on edge.  How would we recover?  Will we get past this?

Then it started to happen.  The true nature of this great city's inhabitants began to shine through; we began to put the pieces back together and fight back.  No one was going to leave us cowering in a corner.  We are Bostonians, for crying out loud!  They shut down the city, and we all watched and waited for hours.  How was it going to end?  The truth is, capture was only the beginning.  Now, we must wait for due process, for justice, for closure. And many more have a longer road back to a new normal. 

In the aftermath, memorials are being discussed.  The city has formed the Boston One Fund to benefit those affected by the bombings. A massive concert was planned for the end of May and sold out before they even had a finalized artists' list.  Even the fabulous chefs of this great city threw their own fundraiser, Boston Bites Back.

I mended my soul in a smaller, more quiet way.  While I blog about food, my other loves are a little more artsy.  I'm a sewist, a hack photographer, and a novice knitter.  The sewing community, with the initiative of a quilting guild in Vancouver, BC, collected banner flags to be created by sewers across the country and around the world to be displayed as buntings in the Shapiro Family Courtyard at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from May 23 - June 16. 

In the meantime, while our hearts start to heal, our city is mending, growing strong.  "Solidarity" is now more than ever part of the Boston vernacular. While this attack was not on the scale of 9/11, for the first time in my life, I now understand the fear and confusion.  I am trying to grasp, like many, for a reason - to make sense of all the senseless violence and destruction and loss of human life.  I know that I will not have absolution, but I have learned the hard way what it feels like to truly be fearful.

Nevertheless, I am strong--Boston Strong.  I am resolute and will not let fear get the better of me.  After all the recent curve balls and dark days, I have found perspective.  Out of this tragedy, I have somehow managed to gain confidence to take back what is mine and go after that which has always been on the horizon, but far enough to be out of reach.  There is just no better time like the present to take action.

Chin up. Eyes Forward. Fear Conquered. Perspective attained - onward.