Rebound

Gone are the days I could shield my son from the news. Driving to basketball practice with four boys on Monday afternoon, he turned to me “Did you hear, mom?” “Hear what,” was my response. Blood stained scenes of the Boston sidewalks and maimed runners had already traveled across their screens and my urge to reach for his phone and shut it off, or better yet, hurl it out the window, was too little, too late. All I could do was keep my eyes on the road, my hands trembling at ten and two—please, let me carry these children safely, please. “Do you have your seatbelts on?” I asked. Were they five years old? Did I seriously just ask them that?

At eleven and twelve, they’re still like puppies, scrambling over each other’s conversations, eager to tell me where, when, how they heard about the Marathon bombing. I struggled for something to say, but I wasn’t fast enough so I drove and listened. It occurred to me that they had received this news with a good measure of detachment, drawing parallels to other horrors of their times.

I was supposed to be baptized on nine-eleven, but my parents cancelled it.

So you mean you weren’t baptized?

Yeah, maybe a week later.

Dude, do you remember water splashed on your head?

Yeah. I was, like, whoa, what’s going on?

How could you possibly remember that?

My mom told me.

Dude, my cousin was in a restaurant and they had to evacuate cuz there was a bomb.

Did it explode?

Nah. It was just a bomb scare. Some nut called and said he’s gonna blow up the place.

Who does that?

Aliens.

Good. Good for you, I thought, for wiping away the terror, for dismissing these maladjusted nuts and insisting that we return to normal as quickly as possible. In the decade since their birth, they have grown accustomed to this cycle of horror as routine, but it hasn’t diminished their trust in us, or in the world, as large and compassionate. I wanted to pull over and just hug them.

Afterward, I watched them saunter leisurely to the gym, jostling and slugging each other playfully. Was I going to sit there in the car for two hours and wait for them? It didn’t seem like a bad plan. Rage and sorrow made it hard to move a muscle. It was a beautiful afternoon. A lacrosse team was running laps on the track. I had my running shoes in the trunk. The only logical thing to do was to see if I could keep up with them.