I was waking up from a nap when I heard. S texted me something about bombs in Boston, and I rolled over, bleary eyed, put the phone back on the night stand. Then I sat up. Wait.

I cried in my hotel room, big, hot, little kid tears that surprised me with their pure sadness. I suppose it was a grief some parts of me recognized before others: Marathon Monday can never be the same. How many of us woke up yesterday and thought 'Aw, Patriot's Day'? My brother and I, each three years since living there, three-quarters of a country between us, thought the same thing. It is a holiday that means nothing to most people. It is something very special. "How could you?" I said, to no one. "It's just so fucking mean." I had to get up and go to an appointment. I sent out messages, everyone was fine. I got to tell a lot of people I loved them, some I hadn't told in a long time, so there was at least that.

Boston is provincial and insane. It's strange and windy and grumpy. And I am so, so lucky that so many of my memories, the backdrop to so much of my life is that beautiful, charming, storied city. I may never move back, but it is half of my heart.

At dinner last night, A told me: "When you see those videos from now on, I want you to think of the people that ran towards the blast, all the people who went to help." That helped.

I care very little about who did it. I don't have much of a palate for revenge, it's just not in my constitution. I think we get what we give in this life, and others, if that's a thing, and the responsible parties will face something terrible. I assume they have already, you must be rotted to the core, infected with something deep and awful that haunts you permanently, to do something like this. That does not explain or excuse or comfort. It probably just is.

There is a part of me, of so many of us, that feels utterly violated. So I am thinking of all the people that ran to help. I am thinking of everyone I love, wherever they are. I am thinking of bricks and flowers and sunlight on water, Fenway at night, old men in undershirts playing Bocce on those courts off Commercial Street. I am remembering the insanity of the wind whipping across City Hall Plaza in the winter, the Baylor-faces of the seals outside the aquarium, sitting on rocks in the Public Garden as the sun goes down, tripping down sidewalks on Beacon Hill.

I am remembering that IM Pei designed the Hancock as a tower of glass to reflect its surroundings in Copley Square, because he couldn't make anything more beautiful.