the busy heart

Last week (or has it been two now?) my brother came into town for work, and brought along his lovely wife, and we spent two really sweet days with them in the city. While my brother was in meetings, we picked up my sister-in-law from their hotel in Copley Square and went to find some lunch. We tried to take her to one of our favorite restaurants in Boston, but as we got closer we realized how close it was to the site of the Marathon Bombings. There were workers repairing the sidewalk a block or so down from it, and when we got to the restaurant itself, it was closed, and people inside were obviously trying to put it back together quickly, and a man was up on a ladder out front, retouching their logo painted on the outside of the building. We kept walking, and I remember pushing the stroller, looking down at Henrietta's white lacy sunhat, and realizing it was so much closer than I had even imagined. After finding another place to have lunch, we sat in the Public Garden, ...

I woke up this morning to the insane news in Boston and spent the day hearing about places not far from our old house mentioned on the news, and receiving updates from friends via Facebook. Stuck inside, they reported eerie silence aside from near-constant sirens and circling helicopters. Some had law enforcement run through their backyards carrying machine guns. Some had them knock on their door and ask to search every room. The suspects lived a few blocks from friends of ours. One of them attended the community college Sam used to teach at. Right now we're listening to reports of police zeroing in on a house that's a two minute drive from our old place. I've been thinking of Boston all week, feeling like I couldn't possibly speak to what happened, not directly. That all I could really do is speak of my little corner of it, while acknowledging what a very small corner it was-- which is what I tried to do on Monday , but it didn't sit right with me, didn't fee...