I stay quiet on this site because I feel like I don’t connect with most of the other girls and members these days. Its not like it was 11 years ago.

Today I have something to say.

Any of you that know me in ‘real life’, or even from this site, know the severity of my love for my hometown. For Boston. I sit here typing this with more Boston related tattoos in my skin than is probably acceptable. I named my dog after this city. I AM this city. This city is me.

I have never had any interest in watching the marathon. I don’t enjoy running, and watching other people do it never appealed to me. But I get it. I get the excitement of watching a loved one cross the finish line. My brother ran this marathon. My coworkers, my friends, my relatives. Its ingrained in us Bostonians as a way of life. Patriots day. Marathon day.

Patriots day is one of those Massachusetts holidays that swells your heart with pride at being the birthplace of our nation. We are the oldest city. The birthplace of America. The revolutionary war, the concord bridge, the ‘don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes’ is just…part of us. My upbringing was steeped in the struggles we faced to become a nation. Its what we know. For those of us born and raised here, its almost taken for granted. Until someone attempts to take it away from us.

I was at work in Concord when the city was bombed. Less than a mile from the Concord bridge…the site of the first battle of the revolutionary war. I had seen part of the marathon while driving that day. Seen army men with rucksacks marching the route. Less than ten minutes after the bombs went off I was crowded around a computer screen with my fellow coworkers watching the footage. I knew that place. I knew that neighborhood. Had it been just a regular Monday I would have been teaching class close enough to have had the windows in my classroom blown out. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. My city needed me and I was 20 miles away.

I stay quiet on this site because I feel like I don’t connect with most of the other girls and members these days. Its not like it was 11 years ago.

Today I have something to say.

Any of you that know me in ‘real life’, or even from this site, know the severity of my love for my hometown. For Boston. I sit here typing this with more Boston related tattoos in my skin than is probably acceptable. I named my dog after this city. I AM this city. This city is me.

I have never had any interest in watching the marathon. I don’t enjoy running, and watching other people do it never appealed to me. But I get it. I get the excitement of watching a loved one cross the finish line. My brother ran this marathon. My coworkers, my friends, my relatives. Its ingrained in us Bostonians as a way of life. Patriots day. Marathon day.

Patriots day is one of those Massachusetts holidays that swells your heart with pride at being the birthplace of our nation. We are the oldest city. The birthplace of America. The revolutionary war, the concord bridge, the ‘don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes’ is just…part of us. My upbringing was steeped in the struggles we faced to become a nation. Its what we know. For those of us born and raised here, its almost taken for granted. Until someone attempts to take it away from us.

I was at work in Concord when the city was bombed. Less than a mile from the Concord bridge…the site of the first battle of the revolutionary war. I had seen part of the marathon while driving that day. Seen army men with rucksacks marching the route. Less than ten minutes after the bombs went off I was crowded around a computer screen with my fellow coworkers watching the footage. I knew that place. I knew that neighborhood. Had it been just a regular Monday I would have been teaching class close enough to have had the windows in my classroom blown out. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. My city needed me and I was 20 miles away. Those same men I had seen with rucksacks on their backs were now tearing down barriers to get to the wounded. The maimed.

I stayed glued to the confusion, the chaos, the coverage. Watching the numbers of injured rise. Fearing the number dead would as well, praying to a god Im not sure even exists that it would not. I drove home wishing I didn’t live alone, so I would have someone to feel connected to in a time when I wasn’t sure what was happening to Boston, the love of my life. I found photos and didn’t heed the warning about the graphic nature of what I was about to be exposed to. I needed to know just what had happened. What someone did. What the dark side of humanity was capable of. I couldn’t ignore it the way I could had this been Chicago, or Detroit. This was MY city after all. In a neighborhood I recognize. Spend time in. during an event that means something…although to be honest I was not aware of it until now.

What I saw has haunted me. What plagues my mind the most is the photo of a young man, still conscious, being hurried to help in wheelchair. Hes pale and covered in soot. He is also missing his legs below the knees. I saw his bones. His skin hanging like cheap fabric. In the coming days I hear the double booms in my brain and see his face. His hands holding his thigh. I am in awe of the human body’s ability to survive such trauma.

I worried about him.

I learn his name is jeff bauman.

He lived.

He is from my hometown.

3 others were not so blessed.

Yet I cannot help but hope those responsible are disappointed. I am certain in this knowledge of their failure.
It is now a surreal position I find myself in, in the days following this event.

The last time I felt this life halting amount of shock and grief was on September 11, 2001. I was a senior in college at Syracuse University in upstate New York. I found solace in the coming together of campus and guidance from my teachers on the day of, and after, the attack. 12 years later I am the one leading the classes, but instead of being upstate from the chaos, I am mere buildings away. My students are participants and spectators….involved in the bombings and looking to me for leadership…for strength…for answers.

I don’t have any.

What I do have is a heart heavy with grief and swollen with pride for a city I love more than most would agree is normal. That’s just how we do things in Boston.

As I write this the college I teach at is still closed, many of the building part of the cornered off crime scene.
I will admit I am not I ready to return to that part of town.

But I will do so when called upon, to stand in front of my classroom and confront the feelings I had when I was their age and the world became scary and we were all confronted with our vulnerability, whether ready to accept it or not.

Be kind to each other.
-b