Boston Strong

April 22, 2014

Greetings from the comeback,

I stood at a small counter and sipped my coffee, and watched the river of people.  I tried to focus on faces, but it would sometimes become a blur of color and motion.    

Business traveler.  Honeymooners.  Students.  A cluster of military uniforms, men and women.  Anxious parent, herding three children among the crowd. 

There are nearly 200,000 people pass through O’Hare each day.  It’s a lot of faces to sift through.  People wearing all manner of costumes to travel; blue jeans, saris, tailored suits, sweatpants, pajama bottoms and hoodies, leather pants and stilettos.

I was looking for a particular profile. 

Not all runners look the same.  If you have ever watched a neighborhood jogger, or been to a local 10k race, or watched a marathon, you know that there is always a good sampling of every shape and size.  One of the great things about running is the open door policy.  If you have the desire, you are welcome.

I wasn’t trying to spot anyone who might be a runner.  I was looking for a particular runner.  After ten minutes I had a number of possible sightings, but it didn’t feel right yet.   

Marathoners make up less than 1% of the population.  Even in the throng surging through the halls of O’Hare it was a challenge to find who I was looking for.  After a while I realized that there was a better way.  I walked to the departure screens and looked for flights to Boston.  Two going out that morning.  One in forty-five minutes.

I walked down the H concourse, weaving between the roller bags and strollers and bustling and dawdling and gawking.  I found a place out of the current and leaned against a wall, sipping my coffee.

I stood across from the gate watched the people clustered around the chairs.  And I spotted them.

A couple in black track pants, brightly colored shoes, tech shirts, lightweight caps.  They were huddled among the chairs, with another man, talking intently.   I looked around the gate area and saw a few other possibles. 

One man walked around the gate area, pacing in front of the windows.  He was the guy I was looking for.  Lean.  Intense look on his face.  Calm, but filled with an energy that was waiting to be unleashed.  He wore loose warm up pants, NikeFit cap.  Long sleeved t-shirt with distinctive blue lettering.  Unicorn logo on the front.

Near where he paced was his duffle. I could tell you without looking what is inside it.  I could tell you that he has checked the contents a dozen times before he left home.  His race shoes.  The shorts, the few shirts he might wear.  The socks he always races in.  Maybe something sentimental, a talisman or a note from a friend, or the finisher’s medal from last year.   He would not have trusted any of this in checked luggage. 

As I stood there I felt myself changing my mind.  I wasn’t going to talk to him.  I suddenly felt like I would be intruding, even though as I write these words this morning I know that wasn’t the case.

I waited until they were lining up to begin the boarding process, and then pushed off the wall to make my way past toward my own gate.    The pacing man walked to the outer edge of the line and I caught his eye.  There was a fraction of a second when we both should have looked away, but as soon as he saw me he recognized me.  I slowed long enough to nod

“Good luck.” I said

He nodded back.

I walked down the concourse toward where my next flight would be.  Thought about what I had been planning to say, satisfied that I had not said any of it.

In Boston, a year ago, two thugs tried to create a stage to express some idea that even today no one understands.  They used violence to cut into an innocent, beautiful, dramatic expression of human effort.  Their insanity tore the life from some, tore the limbs from others.  The effect rippled out and changed things for countless people; some runners and some who love runners.    

In the year that followed I have wrestled with this act, like many of us, and beaten into perspective.  It does not always stay that way.

The Boston Marathon has gone on for 118 years.  There will come a year when people talk about the race and don’t include footnotes about bombs or death.  The stain will fade and we will run on in the same way humans have always run on. 

The senseless act of violence was met with resilience.  It was overwhelmed by love. It was defeated and made irrelevant by the greater force; the spirit that drives runners, and non-runners, to be the human they were intended to be. 

This morning 36,000 members of my family will line up in Hopkinton and face the blue and gold starting line, and the challenge that stretches from there to Boston.  They will run for their own purpose, and for others.  They will represent us in the response to what happened on Boylston a year ago, and to all the dark acts like it.  In their effort, we run on from the worst that man can offer and toward the best we can be. 

I’m glad I got to send my message to them.

Hope this finds you Boston Strong,

David

Copyright © 2014 David Smith