The Mind of a Maverick

For in truth, it’s the beginning of an end
And nothing has changed
Everything has changed.
(David Bowie)

So yes, I’ve been humming David Bowie lyrics in my head this week.  Which only proves that everything has changed.

For instance, my downtown errands.
Since I have lived in Boston, I have never gone 10 days without venturing down Boylston St – seeking help at the Apple store, reading in the Boston Public Library courtyard, shooting the breeze with friends at Marathon Sports, or as the fastest access route to: church, the Boston Commons, the waterfront, the North End, my massage appointments, friends’ homes.

Nothing has changed.  I still venture downtown, I still get to the places (minus the first three) that I need to.
Everything has changed.  There are barricades up around Boylston St – where I watched those final runners come flying into the chute.  There are memorials with flowers and signs and chalk and running shoes surrounding the barricades.  There are policemen guarding the entrances, only allowing those in who live in that area. And I have to walk down crowded Newbury St now.

Nothing has changed on Newbury St.  Mostly expensive shops selling mostly expensive wares.
Everything has changed on Newbury St. Every shop has “BostonStrong” signs or decals in the windows or a letter from the owner about the tragedy pasted to the wall.  Patagonia still has hundreds of signs pasted up – one for each runner who was running the marathon and associated with their store.

And my bike rides home from Charlestown.

Nothing has changed. I still ride from Charlestown across the bridge to the Museum of Science and then dodge runners until I’m on the Charles River bike path. And I smile broadly because the cherry blossoms are in bloom, the MIT sailboats are dotted along the river, people are outside at the various playgrounds, and I am biking faster than the cars are moving on Storrow Drive.

Everything has changed.  A single ambulance siren can give me pause.  For someone who has lived next to the Longwood Medical Complex for four years, I’ve learned to tune it out.  The first year, my parents would call on the phone and pretty quickly say “What’s going on? Why is there an ambulance? Are you okay?”  And I’d explain again that because of my proximity, I hear as many ambulances as I do birds chirping.  It’s part of the background noise.

But on my latest ride…watching 7 motorcycle cops, lights flashing, escort 3 buses (presumably bringing people to the crime scene site) and 5 windows-tinted Tahoe’s through the Storrow Drive traffic jam…it’s hard to not feel a prick of worry.  To remember the past week.

Runs along the river.

Nothing has changed. I still run along the river, I still run.  There may be more runners out  but its hard to tell if these are new additions or just fair-weather friends coming off their treadmills and indoor tracks now that the weather screams “Spring” (except on the days it screams “Just Kidding!”).

Everything has changed. Chalk on the sidewalk with Boston mantras.  Passing MBTA buses that say “We are One” or “BostonStrong” or, yesterday, “Rest in Peace.”  Yesterday morning, my boss suggested I take a break before work got busy and head out for a run.  Try to not think about the last week, just enjoy spring, he suggested.  (Nothing has changed.)  ”Just remember that you can’t run along the river because the Mass Ave bridge and Memorial Drive are completely closed for Sean Collier’s funeral. And you really shouldn’t run along Norfolk St.  And maybe not past the memorial at Stata or the 7-Eleven.”  (Everything has changed.)

Eating the first ice cream of the season with friends.

Last Friday it was in the 70′s.  At least, that’s what Weather.com told me every time I checked the weather on Friday and selfishly wished I could go outside.  On Thursday, ready to do something positive and spring-like, a group of us agreed to walk to the ice cream during our lunch break on Friday.

That never happened.  Although I did giggle when, after an early morning sitting in a cop car, and the rest of the morning stuck inside alone at home listening to the radio and checking the Internet for news, one of the guys texted “So, see you in a few for ice cream?”  If it was any solace, the ice cream store was closed due to its proximity near Norfolk St.

I have not eaten an ice cream cone since last summer.  I am ready for another one.  Nothing has changed.

And yet, everything has.  We postponed our ice cream eating to this Wednesday, another 71 degree day.  And then…the funeral was held.  It didn’t seem right, with 10,000 cops from all over New England pouring into the shut down streets and all of MIT closed so another 10,000 people could attend the ceremony and Secret Service swarms everywhere protecting the Vice President, his wife, and the casket, to think about ice cream.  To even venture out and be seen eating ice cream cones by any of the 20,000 people here for the funeral.  Nothing has changed in my desire to eat ice cream. Everything has changed in my attitude about when it is appropriate.

Receiving packages in the mail.

This came in the mail yesterday.
With this note:
“Hey Liz, thank you again for housing us last Monday!  Hope you’re doing okay! My Mom had picked this up at the expo for me, not realizing she got a Woman’s Small instead of a Man’s small.  It’s just too tight and short on me so we both thought that maybe you could wear it instead? I realize it breaks “runner code” to wear something for an event you didn’t run in but it would mean a lot to me to know that it is being worn around Boston.  You can even become my personal Flat Stanley?”

Nothing has changed. I receive mail. I make friends. I wear hoodies.
And everything has changed.

For all of us in Boston.

I wasn’t planning on posting about this again. Honestly, my first post was my own thoughts, mainly for myself. I guess others were able to glean something from it. But the events on Friday were in some way so sudden (the bombers are still in MA?) and so stretched out (try listening to the same news report for 19 hours straight…real life is not like the movies) that its hard to not reflect.  Forgive any rambling or disconnected thoughts as this was adapted from my personal journal. – Liz

Coming home over the BU bridge and seeing the Boston skyline – it takes my breath away, every single time. It doesn’t matter that I’m hungry after 35 miles biking and may need groin replacement surgery after forgetting to wear padded bike pants and that some annoying motorist honked at me and M even though we were abiding by traffic laws and hugging the far edge of the right lane.  Because yes, despite the BostonStrong, there are still angry drivers who honk at you. Such is real life.

I am cynical and so yet again I wonder why I feel emotional viewing the Boston skyline.  Is it because I love my city? Because I realize that I am viewing something that 4 individuals will never view again? Or is it because I lost my freedom for one day and I am overjoyed to be outside again?

The same thing happened on Saturday.  What a gorgeous day! I ran 3+ miles to a friend’s house, met up with two friends, ran another 5+ miles to another friend’s house, ran 2+ with her.  The miles run together were good – only other people who lived through this experience get how we feel right now.  It’s like planning a wedding or dealing with cancer or preparing for finals – this THING is so all-consuming in your life that you want everyone to talk about it all the time because its the most important thing you’re dealing with right now. But this THING is also so all-consuming that it becomes tiring that people talk about it and you want to talk about anything but it.  No one wins in this situation.

I teared up during my solo portion of the run.  The cynic in me says its because I saw two unattended backpacks at one point in the run and nearly hyperventilated.  The realist in me says that it was windy and I always get tears in my eyes when tackling those hills…and I was tackling them fast.  The stoic in me says that I was repressing emotion but when that little yappy dog jumped out of nowhere and sank her teeth into my calf and I screamed (more from shock than pain) and the owner merely said “Sorry, its been a stressful week for Princess” and my heart rate jumped 1000% that I couldn’t repress the emotion in me.  And the fighter in me says that any time you regain a freedom you had lost (the ability to leave my apartment, the ability to feel safe in my city) you cannot help but cry.

Monday was surreal.  Tuesday and Wednesday were adjusting to a new city…a semi-military state…grief that came in waves…disbelief that was ever present.  But Thursday, it was the day when the city finally exhaled the breath it had been holding and sure, there were still SWAT guys on the corner (one of them told me “I would be scared shitless to bike in the city!”) and there was still a crime scene and the horror was still present but the city was fighting to regain a new normal.  I even did something new (to me) and normal (for most people) and walked with coworkers to the corner 7-Eleven and bought gummy bears for a coworker.  Although this daily walk was not new to me, actually making a purchase at a corner store was. And then, dinner was served along with some photos.  Photos of the suspected bombers.  Photos gleaned with insight from one of the victims. I had naively assumed that all of this would be handled behind the scenes…I was purposely avoiding all social media where people were naively posting their own photos and thoughts on who the bombers were.  But all of a sudden, the FBI was showing real photos. Of real suspects.  It was hard to grasp.

And the Thursday “new normal” was suddenly gone.

And then things moved fast.

For some reason, the media I was following focused only on what was going on in Watertown.  Having barely slept, I was up at 5 AM and decided that heading to the MIT gym, where I could work off some stress and monitor the situation on the TV screens was a good decision. At the end of the Mass Ave bridge (the bridge that loves to hate me), I was detained by some MIT cops. They explained that it was safest if I went home. They even helped me lock up my bike on the MIT campus and offered to drive me home.  We picked up another guy headed to work on the way.

So its ironic that sitting in the back of a police car being safely taken home was when I got most scared.  The cops said “We can’t transfer you to Boston police yet because there is a suspicious package in a taxi up ahead and they need to do some controlled explosions and we are going to sit here while they blow things up.”  Loosely translated as “We don’t know what the heck is going on and we will go investigate and you will be locked up in the cop car while we do so.”

And that’s when it got personal. Because our human minds strive to help us understand things, they also do us the disservice of personalizing things.  I learned that the corner store I had bought gummy bears in had been robbed, supposedly by the bombers, less than 6 hours later.  They were walking on my turf.  And an MIT cop had been shot and killed directly in front of the Stata center – a place I walk to and from every single day, sometimes multiple times.

I can’t begin to describe how I felt about this news. This fall, I stood in front of the Stata center with an MIT cop explaining that my bike was stolen.  He told me that his bike had been stolen twice at gunpoint.  He told me that his elderly parents live in the apartment building next to mine and if I ever see an MIT cop car parked there, I will know it is him and that my neighborhood is extra safe right then.  And he wouldn’t let me leave until a friend came and I rushed straight into my friend’s arms and buried myself in his hoodie and the cop patted my friend on the shoulder and said “Take good care of her” and I said “Thank you” but maybe my thank you was muffled.  I hate to think that it was.  Because a few months later, another MIT cop, doing his job, was ambushed in his car and killed. And I hope he knows that we are all so grateful.  And that my “Thank You” will never again be muffled, because I have made sure to thank every police and FBI and ATF agent that I have seen since.

And so I held the hand of a stranger in the back of an MIT cop car and waited out a lot of very loud controlled explosions. I didn’t know then that the reason my turf had been violated was that it was also their turf.  They (or at least one of them) lived a few blocks away from where I work. On a street that I run on weekly. Very near to the homes of my friends. And now one was dead and the other was hiding, somewhere near the homes of my friends in Watertown.

And then I was home.  And the text messages were fast and furious and the media reports sounded fast and furious but were really regurgitating the same things over and over again…hero who identified the bombers…FBI working so fast…can’t believe they were going about their regular lives – gym, car mechanic – this past week…why did they stay in Boston…were they planning more attacks…younger brother ran over the older brother…Chechnya…bombs strapped to his chest…car-jacking and shootout with police…city on lockdown…press conference with governor and mayor…

And the walls started caving in on me and I wanted to go out – to go outside and breath fresh 70 degree sunshine and feel alive and warm. I, like everyone else, was impatient for the second bomber to be caught already. And caught alive. With no more injuries or death. It seemed an improbable request but it was everyone’s prayer – before nightfall, before people start freaking out and more tips are called in that divert police forces and more bad things happen because there are no available cops to do their nightly patrols, before darkness causes mistakes to happen.

And my mantra became: unfair but necessary.  It is unfair but necessary that the cops are working long hours and unable to sleep or go home to their loved ones. It is unfair but necessary that everyone in Watertown is on lockdown and that the rest of our city is on voluntary lockdown with no MBTA or taxis to take us from place to place.  It is necessary to keep everyone safe and necessary to keep people out of harm’s way and necessary to keep police from worrying about the usual and mundane: crowd control, traffic jams, broken traffic lights, Red Sox games, daily MBTA breakdowns. It is unfair but necessary that family members of the bombers are being questioned.  Do I think that just because someone is family, they should be assumed guilty?  Absolutely not. But do I think it is necessary that the police follow up every lead – talk to family, read his Twitter account, question his friends, raid his house, evacuate the house and the dorm because bombs don’t just appear and there must be a stash of other bombs. It is unfair but necessary that I relinquish a day of gorgeous sun and my freedom to go where I please. And it is maybe unfair to those who died to pray that this boy, this bomber, lives but it is also necessary. And maybe it is even unfair that the doctors tried to revive the first bomber but it is necessary because it is their jobs and they have sworn an oath and life is life.

Real life is not a movie.  It’s complicated and strange and there were many rabbit holes all day long that the media would take us down which were irrelevant and unrelated and watching a manhunt unfold in real time was both highly reassuring (our city FBI and cops are amazing) and highly creepy (I am watching a very dangerous possibly wounded teenager be hunted down on TV).

And then the manhunt ended. A boat…not in water…but in Watertown.  A man who saw blood leading up to that boat.  Some thermal imaging technology and some rounds fired and there is the reason I love America – because the same FBI and ATF officials that were intent on capturing him are now tending to his wounds and it makes me cry because he doesn’t deserve it because he killed people but he does deserve it because we believe in right and wrong and decency and trial and judgment without cruel punishment but whether or not this young man was corrupted by his older brother, I have seen the image – where he is standing with a backpack supposedly carrying a pressure cooker bomb at his feet – and a little 8 year old boy next to him and he must know that his actions will irreparably harm this child and he does not care.  And it makes me sick and it makes me grateful and I watch him carted off to Mt Auburn Hospital and I text my friend “I understand why people are in the streets shouting U-S-A but I do not understand why people are gathering at the hospital.  Why?  To gawk at a wounded animal, to hate him in person, to post on their Facebook status that they saw the ambulance carrying the bomber?”

And it is over.  ”All ovah” as the Boston cops say. Except its not at all over.  Not that night – as we drive home we get stopped in front of Beth Israel by a large crowd (imagine the Beauty and the Beast scene with their pitchforks and cries of “Kill the Beast!” and you will understand why this was scary) and we turn on the radio and check on the peacefully sleeping baby deep breathing in the seat behind me and learn that he is being transferred from Mt Auburn to Beth Israel because they have better doctors.  And I am mad because he is coming here and we are stuck in this crowd and there are lots of police and sirens and I want to be home and asleep and not dealing with this right now. And I am humbled that they are moving him to a place with better doctors. A place that houses many of his victims. And I am confused because the crowd is screaming “U-S-A” but do they not realize that this boy, not by blood, but by citizenship, is one of us? Are any of us truly America by blood or are we all American solely by citizenship?  Are they cheering out of love or out of hate?  Are they truly thanking the cops for keeping us safe or are they causing more headaches because these cops want to sleep and not deal with crowd control?  Is thanking the cops by creating a crowd that requires the cops to deal with the crowd that is trying to thank the cops logical to anyone?  Because it feels like trying to mend a hole in the bucket that cannot be mended precisely because of that hole.

And it is not over because I lay in bed, with a fan and an air conditioner on full blast (I can still hear the crowd), and I marvel at how the manhunt ended so well but there are still a dead boy, and 2 dead women, and a dead cop.  And there are limbs that will not grow back and nightmares that will not cease and questions unanswered. And one day the wounds will not bleed but there will be scars.  And one day the streets will be washed clean of the blood, but the people walking those streets will not forget.  And the federal death penalty will be sought by a group that will also ensure that this bomber is given food and medical attention. And a doctor will touch both the attacker and the attacked with equal care. And I will run on the street again and walk to that corner store and pray blessings on that cop’s family every day. And I will no longer mumble my thanks as I walk past that ambush site, that stolen bike site, and leave my clothes in the gym locker so I can run around the river…not as far as Watertown except on long marathon training runs…but long enough to see the Boston skyline.

And I will continue to live in the knowledge that I am not God. That words like “American” and “justice” and “mercy” and “forgiveness” and “Miranda rights” and “love” and “safety” are complicated.  Too complicated for me to fully know. And this story full of holes and whys and whos and whens will be researched ad nauseum but never complete. And there will be empty seats at holiday gatherings because of this and there will be empty shoes for those who will never run again. There will be grief, there will be love, there will be no going back to before the bombing.

And that is unfair.  Absolutely, no doubt about it, worth-having-a-tantrum-over unfair.
But also necessary.

Living in Boston and loving my city means I feel obliged to post about what happened on Monday. But I also don’t feel prepared with anything to say – just a jumble of emotions that have yet to “settle” (will they ever) and a lot of disbelief.

I’m mad personally. This was the first marathon I have ever watched live (versus: marathons runs, marathons volunteered at, marathons watched on TV).  I watched it with friends and their two new babies.  We cheered for a friend of mine (who came in 46th! First in NH!) and we watched a guy eat half a cheeseburger at mile 25.2.  We yelled the names of every runner who had written their name on their arm or added it to their shirt. I didn’t even indulge in selfish thoughts of “I want to be running” which is typically what I think at every racing event. We were discussing the heady question of “Where is God during Suffering” at the precise moment of the explosions.  I’m mad that my Patriots Day holiday – the Red Sox winning, the sun shining down on proud spectators and runners alike, time with friends – was ruined.

I’m mad on behalf of the runners.  Those who finished – who were put in lockdown or herded into area hotels or saw horrific images or crossed the finish line while no one was watching because a bomb was going off.  And those who did not finish – who thought their biggest concern was cramps or dehydration or a past injury and not personal safety and safety of those waiting for them at the finish.  Those who trained all those months and all those miles for one day and then were not allowed to finish their race.  Those who were stranded without phones, wallets, keys, warm clothes, knowledge of loved ones, ways to get home.  No one should finish a marathon without a medal…let alone without a finish line and food and water to fill their depleted bodies.

I’m mad on behalf of the victims. We all are. That people lost their lives, their limbs, or are otherwise injured because they were in the right place (the finish line) and someone chose to make that the wrong place.  A celebration of what the human body (and the stubborn human mind) is capable of became a horrific tragedy as those watching people run suddenly lost their own freedom in that regard.

I’m sickened that someone would do this. Someone or multiple someones would plan this – not at a military base or some political arena – but here, in the heart of Boston near my Public Library and the candy store and the running store where I just bought my latest marathon sneakers.

I’m distressed that some runners have to live with the knowledge that their loved ones were harmed because they were being supportive.  It feels selfish enough, as a marathoner, to ask people to come and cheer and support you while you run 26.2 miles…to put up with your exhaustion and potential grumpiness if you don’t meet a goal and your need to walk down stairs gingerly.  There is a lot of waiting for the spectators.  As a marathoner, you want people there.  People who know you. But you never imagine that at the end of the race, you will be the healthy one and they will be rushed to a hospital.

And the running community is awesome.  Runners love talking about running, they love how running transcends other areas of life and teaches you to make goals but also to adjust to the elements and forces out of your control.  They love to help other runners run better, to persevere over injuries and come back stronger.  To make sure everyone – from the first place Elite to the last place walker – has an enjoyable experience and came away learning something new about themselves and their ability to push hard.  Runners help each other.  That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that runners were running to the hospital to give blood or giving their finishers’ medal to another runner who got stopped before the finish.

And Bostonians may be tough and aggressive but threaten their city, harm their visitors, endanger their children and…they become more tough and aggressive.  But with a tender side.  The Google Doc of people offering food, shelter, transportation was staggeringly long.  I’m from New Hampshire so I’m not surprised by the outpouring of hospitality that was offered…but I am pleased to see a city (rather than the countryside) react to a scary unknown event by inviting unknown people in. This is why community, wherever you live, is so awesome.

As I type this, birds are chirping (it is spring after all) and the city is coming to life.  Cities are noisy places. So noisy that you get used to it – a dull loudness that you can never get far away from.  On Marathon Monday morning, I biked 25 miles out of the city – I needed some peace and quiet before all the cheering and celebrating. I needed to release some energy and frustration.  I needed to get out of the claustrophobia that city life can bring.  I remember thinking “Wow, its so quiet and calm.” And I loved it.

Fast forward a few hours.  A loud noise…is that a failing generator?  But no…why are the police running, literally sprinting, towards the finish line?  Why are runners being turned away from the course?   And then, unlike the day the hotel generator caught fire and all of Boston went dark – no electricity, no noise – for over a day, the city is suddenly screaming.  From 3 pm until 1o pm, the wail of fire trucks and ambulances and police cars, but especially ambulances, help us God, was incessant.  The overhead beat of blades on wind of the media and police helicopters was constant (a hum and throb that did not let up, louder than your heartbeat but just as consistent).  So this is what a police state looks like.  SWAT teams on each street corner…in their camouflage (designed to stand out, rather than blend in)…large weapons at the ready.  Police everywhere.  Everywhere.  42 cop cars were parked on the Charles River Bike Path that evening – a path used for runners and bikers became a police gathering spot.  As did so many other “high runner areas.”

I had always thought the city loud.  Yet when the wailing stopped late at night and my apartment fan blocked out the helicopters and there were no more blasts of water cannon and phones stopped ringing and the cell service resumed, it seemed eerily quiet. I could finally contact people also living in Boston, not just those many states away.  No longer did your phone seizure as it received 50 text messages, then sit stone still for another hour while service was diverted elsewhere and all calls were dropped and half the text messages said “From Unknown: Message Unknown.”

On one hand, we were here experiencing it. On the other hand, we were trapped in a bubble, calling outside to find out information about what was happening mere blocks away.  It was scary.  It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, when I lowered myself into the pool to swim my 33 laps and all was quiet and warm and comforting, did I realize I had been shaking most of the day.

And it wasn’t until late Monday night, when I took off my Napa Valley Marathon shirt – (horrifying to think something could have happened there…that my Mom & sisters could have been injured waiting for me at the finish line…can I ever invite someone else to another race?)  Will I ever walk to the library or bike down Boylston St or run the sidewalk (like I do dozens of times a month) without remembering this tragedy? – that I was finally beginning to grasp what had happened.

I looked at the two necklaces I wore:

The state of NH.  So proud of Brandon being the first NH resident. So proud of his achievement and relieved that he is safe (who ever thought I would be more worried about a marathoner’s safety than their electrolyte levels and IT band?).  So wishing I was in NH right now but torn because my city needs me and I need it.

My marathon necklace – 3 distinct charms.  A recent birthday gift from another runner.  Before where I saw perseverance and determination and love of running, I now think of the 3 lives lost.  3 people who never get to run again. And when I woke up the next morning and ran 3 miles (because I’m a runner and that is how we cope with stuff even when the stuff is now inextricably linked to running) I devoted each mile to one of them and their families and friends.

Yesterday, we gained a lot.  A new love for our city, a new protective spirit towards our city, our community extended itself to encompass thousands of visitors and runners.  But despite the power in helping and the officials who are actively working the crime scene still, we also lost.  We lost unique individuals who were much loved. We lost freedom and security and innocence.  We have wonderful hospitals that are the envy of the nation…but no one is envying the people lying in hospital beds and the people pacing and praying in the waiting rooms.  We gained worldwide support…but no one wants to be the city in the spotlight for such a tragic reason.

And in the stillness of my bedroom, gazing at the necklaces…in the stillness of the pool, listening to my heavy breathing…in the morning birdsong, stretching into my stride…I can only say “Have mercy on my city, God. Have mercy on those hurting and those scared and those who saw horrific things and those still working to make our city safe again and to uphold justice. And have mercy on all those everywhere who experience tragedies – those who don’t have SWAT teams and media coverage and the NY Yankees singing Sweet Caroline and Google creating Find People search engines.”

Once again, I have the seen the holy and the unholy converge. And the holy perseveres.  I see strangers sleeping in my apartment and neighbors talking to each other and police men crying and women hugging sweaty runners and community forming and strangers giving blood and doctors answering pagers and people turning belts into tourniquets and a race about first place becoming a day about finding a place for everyone and, in this moment, at least, I find some comfort.