So Good So Good So Good

On Monday the girls and I had a simple and perfect day. The sun was shining and strong enough for the first playground-without-coats adventure of the season. Little A. made best best friends with a girl named Lillia somewhere between the swings and the slide. Her mom and I chatted while the kids swirled around our legs. The other woman's accent was lovely and hard to place - a very slight Eastern European inflection that is rare around these parts. We are a fairly homogenous bunch, we Mainiacs. Anyway, their little family had to leave in a hurry when their youngest member started tantruming in anticipation of leaving, and I wasn't able to get any contact information. I felt a little bad about it, but also excited that my big girl was proving -- so unlike me -- to make friends easily and casually.

We came home for lunch, both girls napped while I did a little work, and then because it was so lovely and spring-y and because Little A has 20/20 vision for anything ice cream related, we went up to our local soft-serve institution for the first cone of the season (on our way home, in the midst of a busy intersection made busier by a huge construction project, she noticed CARS in the parking lot of the ice cream place. WHY ARE THERE CARS AT LIBS? she demanded to know. Our afternoon was decided in that moment).

Some good friends joined us in a DOUBLE BONUS move and after we said our hellos and when Little A. was out of earshot a bit, Brian said someone blew up the Boston Marathon. My heart stopped and my brain went in several directions before I said, intelligently, Huh? What? Is there not a shitton of security there? And how do you blow up a marathon? It's...you know...long? No one knew much at that point.

And so we had our ice creams and then went home for more outside fun with bubbles and in moments when the girls were otherwise occupied I stole glances at Facebook and the Boston Globe online. No one knew much then either but I needed information, information, more information. The sun was shining, and people were dying, and no one knows why.

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I can safely characterize my relationship with that little city as "complicated." It was the center of the universe to us during high school, where all the coolest bands played and where you could buy the best posters/shoes/t-shirts. Then, after a stint in the midwest, I went to college there and lived there for a few years post-graduation but never quite clicked in with the place. I didn't understand its people, who seemed (mostly) so cold and unwelcoming, in comparison to the friendly city of Chicago which had been my home just prior; its public transportation, that shut down just when you needed it most; its bars, which tried so hard to be cool but just...weren't. I made a very small group of friends in college who then proceeded to shun me for reasons just beyond my grasp. I found a nice boyfriend and we moved in together, but it never felt quite right. And then I made a bunch of stupid, reckless choices and lost my mind for a bit. And then I slowly pieced it together and found a new clan and spiritual home at a local dance studio. And then there was 9/11.

The sun was shining that day, too. I remember the head of the literary agency where I was working running into our end of the office, out of breath, saying Oh god, just turn on the TV, turn on the TV. And we all watched in horror for a few minutes or an hour and then they sent us all home. No one knew anything at that point; there was no twitterverse to spread news true or false. Just this loop of footage no one of our lifetime will ever forget. I decided to walk home because the idea of an underground train was too scary. I walked up Boylston Street from the Commons to Copley, with my face in the sun. The city is very pretty, in parts, the parts you see on TV: the swan boats and the shining skyline and the wide river with scullers zipping along like skimmer bugs. I noticed all of that beauty on my walk and suddenly knew with an awful clarity that someone could destroy it all in a second. That someone had tried to destroy my most favorite American city. I decided during that long walk home that I was going to move to New York City. The sun was shining, people were dying, and no one knew why.

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A couple of months before I moved, I was running errands downtown. I turned a corner and almost literally stumbled onto the finish of the Boston Marathon. It was very late in the day; the finishers were the slow runners. Or the walkers. Where I would be in a marathon, surely. But there was still a small crowd of onlookers cheering folks across the finish line. The Marathon, while a Super Big Deal in Boston, had never crossed my consciousness before. Huh, I thought, look how nice these Bostonians are being. That's weird. The only other time I remember open shows of support and joy in the city was when the Pats won the Superbowl in 2001. I stood watching the cheers and the folks collecting their medals and blankets for a minute or two, then gathered up my backpack and started to cross. Then a Boston cop said hey miss, you can't cross here and I probably scowled at him and went to go eat a bagel.  We've all seen the photos now. The chaos, the smoke, broken people hauled away in policeman's arms or on gurneys. Why, we are all asking. Why?

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Why? Because a small but very determined group of people hate. They hate not-them. That's why. They hide behind stone walls and religion and conspiracy theories and the internet. 

During a chat with a friend, a far-away friend who is very dear, I had another epiphany. We are connected, but not connected. Not really. And I am far from the first person who has realized this but, whatever, it was my epiphany. Because of the internet, I can stay "connected" with my friends all around the country. Because of the internet, I can see what my high school crush had for breakfast. I can also, if I so choose, find a group of people who strongly believe that our President is a Caucasian-hating Muslim bent on destroying our nation. Or who believe that gay marriage will destroy the moral fabric of our society. Or that single mothers are worse for the same than prostitutition. On the internet, the old cartoon goes, no one knows you're a dog. I am personally culpable for allowing some of my relationships erode because I can "connect" on the internet. You know me: you read my blog, you saw my Facebook post, or my Instagram snap, you know me. I read you, too, so I don't need to call or write you a long email or make the effort to see you. I know your life.

But I don't. I can't walk up to you at the playground and see your face light up when my kids run to give you a hug. I don't see the pained reaction of the blogger who I decided it would be clever to point out misused a punctuation mark in an otherwise fine post. I don't see the look of disappointment from my friend who is a public policy expert is when I toss off a knee-jerk political statement on my Facebook page.

We don't see each other anymore, and it is way easier to not see. There was a brief interim of connection, a respite from ironic meanness, post 9/11, and now immediately post-each tragedy, there is a boom of helping, of reaching-out, of oneness and all that jazz you hear in your yoga class. But it's temporary, and crisis-driven, and we so easily sink back into our complacency, our chairs inside of rooms lit but the glow of screens.

It's not that I think if the terrorists, whomever they are, could see our faces, and hear our voices, and watch us love our children, they would suddenly stop thinking we are the enemy. It's more that all of these terrible recent events are making me want to connect, really. And to parent differently. To limit my own internet time and not let it bleed into bathtime, bedtime, dinnertime. To travel and live in different places instead of doing a Google image search. To visit our neighbors instead of sending an e-card. To go to museums and farms and beaches and the woods. To walk the streets in our own little city instead of driving everywhere. To make efforts to nurture relationships and to let my kids understand that it's worth it. To make sure they don't fear saying hello to their neighbors, or chatting with the person next to them on the bus, or approaching someone who really needs help, or walking up to the othergirl on the playground around their own age and say Hi, wanna swing with me?

We can give them all the lessons in the world about how to be safe and cautious, but when it comes down to it, I think perhaps a bigger danger is being too safe, too cautious. Don't walk in a park at night has been replaced by never ever ever talk to anyone unless you know them. 

I want my kids to be different. I want their world to be different. A smaller world, a more connected world. Maybe, just maybe, if we could raise a generation of people who really see each other, so they feel connected to each other and the world immediately around them, it will make it harder, just a tiny bit, for them to destroy the beautiful places others might hold dear. To destroy each other.

We'll see.

And in the meantime, I am sending all my love to my far-flung friends, in Boston and beyond, and holding my daughters a little tighter.

And sending up a prayer: Please be well, please let me see you for a long, long time.

xoxo, A