From the very first Facebook friend post -- "omg explosions at the Marathon" -- I knew that something big, even huge, was upon us here in Boston and upon me. Little did I then guess how big. Or how damaging.
The disbelief, the horror at seeing people with their legs blown off, the clouds of smoke, the first responders rushing toward -- not away from -- the blasts, the Twitter and Facebook you-are-there reporting -- in which I as a newsie grabbed my place. A whirlwind of feelings and things to do hit me, almost as a blast or a wave as the scrim of shrapnel, shards, and ball bearings that tore through the injured and holed the killed. But as a newsie I had a story to report, followers to inform, a job to do that made me feel that I mattered; as a neighbor, family, and friend I had people to cry with, to be as shocked with, boomed with; to be as resolute with as they with me. Whoever did this to us had it all wrong. They could damage us but never ever change how we do or why and how.
Their terror had actually strengthened us. Made us more who we are than we had been.
And we moved forward, going about our lives as we had every right to do.
But we were not as strong as we thought. Slowly we pulled ourselves into the terror maw. First pull: we wanted, needed, insisted to know, who did this ? And so we tweeted and followed and Facebook surfed, posted, shared. We drew conclusions. We believed mistakes and made our own mistakes -- me too. But we persisted and finally came some surveillance videos that seemed to identify a culprit, two culprits.
All had it wrong. Arrests that were announced as imminent never happened. And so we realized that we could not simply figure out who did this, or why. Thus we went back to living our lives, as we have every right to do.
Then came the Interfaith service on Thursday; Mayor, Cardinal, FBI, Governor, President all spoke out, spoke our deepest feeling: that we were a community, that "they picked the wrong city," that we were "Boston strong," that the perps' maimings and slaughter could not change us or stop us from living our lives, as we have every tright to do.
Then came the Big Break: an FBI video showed two suspects, one not so clear to see, but the other one so clear -- so cruelly, painfully clear -- that his haughty, self-satisfied nonchalance clung to us like claws to one's nose. So now the chase was on but still we went about our lives, as we have every right to do.
The suspects must have noticed this. Noticed that though they had wounded our city, they had had no effect whatsoever upon our living our lives, as we have every right to do.
And so they struck again, and again. Robbed a 7/11 store, hijacked a car, shot an MIT campus policeman dead, dropped another of their awful pressure cooker bombs, ran for it, engaged in another shootout with an MBTA transit officer, dropped more bombs; and then another shootout -- by which time the older suspect was dead.
We knew them by name now: Tsarnaev brothers, from Chechnya originally, though living here in the U.S. for over a decade, now in Cambridge!
And we thought: "Chechens! Fearful killer fighters!" This was fear for real. We hadn't forgotten the Chechen fighters who had taken over a school and killed 300 including kids.
Fierce and fearless we saw the younger brother, Dzhokhar, age 19. A gun-kid armed like nuts. He was on the run in a maze of residential streets and shopping malls in Watertown west of Cambridge. He would kill anything that moved!
We were changed now, and how. Boston-strong ? Not us!
First the police ordered all of Watertown locked down, then surrounding communities, then part of Boston; then all of Boston; transit shut down; then taxi cabs (later allowed to run again); then Amtrak; buses. Businesses closed, schools. Events were cancelled. No one could go to work. Hospitals were locked down: no one could leave -- or arrive, except by ambulance. Even as I write, the huge freeze remains glaciered on our bodies.
And as I sit here, unable to do ANYTHING but rant, I say: what happened to all that happy talk about "they will never change our way of life"? What happened to our sang froid, our boldness, our refusal to let terror bend us like a venetian blind slat ? What happened to our right to live our lives, as we have every right to do?
Who did this to us? We did it. To ourselves. We are afraid. Exactly what terrorists want, we gave them. We did it. We stink the skunk spray of fear now, and it will not be easily washed off when the vinegar of liberty is finally granted back to us, nor the tomato juicer of movement make us whole again for a long, long time.