Taking back the Marathon

Today J and I joined more than a million other spectators in taking the final step of purification after last year’s Boston Marathon bombings: we took back the Marathon. Last year I wrote about the sense of outrage I felt after Marathon Monday—Massachusetts’ high holy day of hospitality—was hijacked by cowards with pressure cookers. Today, one of those cowards is dead and the other is behind bars, awaiting trial. In the meantime, a record number of spectators showed up along the 26.2 mile route between Hopkinton and Boston today to make one simple statement: we won’t be bombed into hiding.

Cowards with pressure cookers can kill and maim, but nearly a year and a week later, surging crowds of enthusiastic spectators came outside on a gorgeous spring day to clap, cheer, ring cowbells, wave signs, and remember. To paraphrase David “Big Papi” Ortiz, this is our fucking marathon, and nobody’s going to dictate our freedom.

Today’s act of reclamation was a long time coming. Last April, less than a week after bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, J and I went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park: a way of reassuring ourselves that it still was safe to congregate with strangers in a crowd. A week after that, A (not her real initial) and I went for a walk and dinner in Watertown: a conscious attempt to reclaim the sleepy little town that became the site of Breaking News during the manhunt for the bombing suspects. And a few weeks after that, J and I visited the massive makeshift memorial at Copley Square: an act of purification in which we visited the very spot where people were killed and maimed, taking back Boylston Street as a peaceful place where remembrance happens.

There was an increased and very visible police presence at today’s Marathon, which J and I watched from our usual vantage point between miles 18 and 19 in Newton. But this presence felt more reassuring than oppressive: the more eyes watching, the better. Given changes in official policies about what spectators could bring to the race route, I wondered whether families with small children would stay away from the race, uncertain whether strollers, wagons, picnic baskets, and coolers were allowed. I needn’t have worried, however, since families showed up with the normal accoutrements of a day at the Marathon, willing to submit those items to random searches but otherwise behaving no differently than they would any other year.

If anything, there were more people lining the race route in Newton this year, not less. I think that others felt as J and I did: that showing up to the race today more than any other year represented a kind of civic duty. If we stop going to the Marathon—if we stop celebrating Patriots’ Day by holding a huge 26.2-long block party that happens to have a race running through it—then the terrorists will have won. Today wasn’t a day to cede victory to terror; today was a day to assert the fact that love, inclusion, and good neighborliness is stronger than any bomb.

After spending a couple hours clapping and cheering ourselves hoarse between Miles 18 and 19, J and I headed home while even more spectators streamed toward the Marathon route, many of them wearing Boston Strong shirts and carrying an assortment of signs and noisemakers. J summed up my sentiments exactly as he watched the surge of happy, enthusiastic people and remarked, “I guess you lost, bomber guys.” On a beautifully sunny spring day in New England, how could the bad guys ever prevail?

Click here for more photos of this year’s bright and sunny Boston Marathon. Enjoy!