Summer 2013: "Thou Shalt Have No Wasted Days!"

Summer vacation starts for us in two days. At noon, to be precise. And not a moment too soon, let me tell you!

Indeed, it's a very late dismissal this year because of a very snowy winter, especially the second half of it. All five allotted snow days were used, pushing classes much too close to the Fourth of July weekend for my liking.

What that means on the other end, of course, is that our break from school will be that much shorter. Only two months long, to be exact. And when I say "exact," I really mean it. Not one day extra, not one day less. Honestly, I think there might have been an uprising if summer vacation had been reduced any more.

Still, two months. TWO MONTHS! Ugh. I shudder to think about resuming the school-day routine on August 28 when the days are blisteringly hot and steamy.

Speaking of BLISTERINGLY HOT AND STEAMY, our weather of late has only compounded the agony of this extra week of classes (and Field Days and a field trip to Boston). Northeastern Massachusetts has felt more like Texas than one hour south of the northernmost state in New Engand. Today is the third day of a heat wave, generally defined in the region as three days in a row of 90-degree temperatures or higher. In fact, yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far with the mercury climbing to 95 degrees, tying the record for that day set in 1976.


With such an abbreviated vacation, parents may feel added pressure to make the most of it. I know I do. "Thou shalt have no wasted days." The Eleventh Commandment.

Like many -- dare I say, most? -- parents of school-age kids, I am DONE with the school year. Caught-on-fire-marshmallow-over-a-campfire done. I'm weary of getting up at a certain early time, preparing breakfast for the troops, making lunches or putting $2.75 in labeled envelopes for lunch money, choosing clothes for my boys to wear, reviewing their homework, and packing their backpacks. I've had enough hurrying off to school -- either walking or driving (when we're tardy). And I'm tired of having to race over to the school at 2:55 p.m. for pickup, followed later in the day by a sports practice or game, the making of dinner, and the overseeing of homework. Everything gets pushed back too far into the evening, cutting into my alone time.

As a full-time single mother coming up on a decade, I require "me time" to decompress -- and, at the risk of sounding too New Agey, get centered from my daily stress. Doing what I need to do to nourish my brain and/or senses -- whether that be Facebooking; reading a book, magazine, or news article; e-mailing; or watching TV (I've really taken to nighttime dramas with catchy one-word names such as Revenge, Nashville, Scandal, the now-canceled Deception, and Motive, my latest -- I stay up too late then predictably feel and look like the wreck of the Hesperus the next day.

Isn't what I really need sleep? Well, yes, yet I crave my quiet time after the boys have gone to bed. Anyway, I vow to do better the next night, but invariably it happens again and again and again. It's a vicious cycle.


Getting through the rigid school year requires discipline, adherence to a schedule, and tolerance of repetition. SO MUCH REPETITION! God Almighty. Personally, I prefer things to be loosey goosey. Get up whenever. Cobble together some random food. Roll down the driveway as the spirit moves me. Do I sound like a slacker bachelor? You have the right idea. I am the female equivalent. I just happen to have two children.

But not even the summer can be truly loosey goosey when said children are young, as mine are. They wake you with their noise. They need you to get them to their morning day camp at their school, of all places, making it feel awfully like a school-year dropoff. They need to be wearing clean clothes that they didn't wear the day before. They need to have money in their pockets for a drink and/or snack. They need you to pick them up at noon (or whenever, and from wherever). And they need you to deliver them to and from their next activity wearing the proper attire and carrying the proper equipment, if necessary. They still need to eat meals. They still need to be prompted to brush their teeth and bathe. And they still need to be coaxed into bed.

Loosey Goosey? Hardly.

Unless they go to sleepaway camp or spend a good part of July and August living elsewhere with a divorced parent or other relative, kids are generally home a lot more during the summer than the school year. And while that can certainly be wonderful, it can also be very challenging. Most parents need to work during the day, and they also need a break from child care. Siblings get on each others' nerves, especially in the very hot or rainy weather and when they are around each other too much because they don't have enough to do or enough to do separate from one another. Days can be long and arduous for parents when the squabbles and physical fights begin.

So while a school year is predictable, summer is more of an unknown quantity. It is also very individual. My family's summer will not look like your family's summer, and your family's summer will not look like your neighbors' family summer. But if you live in my community and send your kids to the public school like I do, then our summers will have one thing in common this year: they will be very short.

Make your summer a good one!

When You Live Near Glostah

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

Your house is biggah;
Your daughter, prettiah.
Your marriage is strongah,
And you spend money freeah.

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

You are most likely blondah
as well as slendah,
certainly not dumbah.
You don't drive a Hummah.

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

You drink wine to numb yah,
Love to gossip -- or is it slandah?
But you call it the formah
Because that is so much safah.

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

You rarely make a blundah,
you around-town runnah,
hanging near the beach and harbah
in Tory Burch. How up-and-comah!

When you live near Glostah,
Your compost is made of lobstah.
Your neighbor's cat is Coopah,
And your favorite season is summah.

Parental Pride

I often write about the challenges of single parenting. The hiccups, ordeals, frustrations, and downright aggravations. They occupy a lot of my time. They can consume my thinking, and they often provide me with constant fires to put out.

But it is the moments of triumph that come amidst the problems and the plain-old mundane that make parenting so very worthwhile. They can be simple and small snippets of time such as watching my sons harmoniously practice making soccer goals together in the backyard or sending my older son off to school after a full night of sleep and confident he will do well on the MCAS exams required in Massachusetts. But sometimes they are much bigger accomplishments that take my breath away and give me a high the next day that rivals the ones gleaned from a fantastic date, an awesome concert, or arrival in a tropical paradise.

This week I experienced such a parenting high. And as is so often the case when a child achieves something spectacular, the road to the success was bumpy -- making the end result that much sweeter.

My older son hit a grand slam in a Little League game. With one out, two strikes, and bases loaded in his team's last up at bat, Christopher smacked a ball into left field behind third base. From my vantage point near first base, it looked like it would veer into foul-ball territory. It did not. Christopher rounded first and headed toward second. The ball hadn't been fielded yet from the outfield, so he kept running as his teammates and their parents cheered him on. He made it home just in time, outrunning the throw. His teammates poured out of the dugout to greet him, and I whooped and hollered out of pride and gratitude.

Having just returned from the town next door where my younger son was playing in his own Little League game, I only just barely saw Christopher's infield home run. I had parked, stepped out of the car, and immediately heard my son's name announced. ("Christopher Siems," mispronounced as "Seems," of course.) Chris was next at bat.

Wanting him to know I'd arrived, I called out: "Go, Chris! Watch the ball!" He listened. Boy, did he listen.

Chris came through in the biggest way possible. His hit raised the score from 7-2 to 7-6. Unfortunately, his team -- the A's or Athletics -- didn't bring in any more runs that final inning, so the A's lost the game against the Blue Jays. It didn't matter. In my book, my son had won BIG TIME.

As we ate celebratory sundaes at our favorite ice cream stand that afternoon, Christopher explained how he was able to hit the ball so well: a classmate's father had helped him with his grip prior to a game the day before that he had been invited to play in. That game was a AAA game, one level up from Chris's AA games.

The third-grade class at his school is so big that there were too many players who went out for the AAA. As a result, Little League officials drawing up the teams decided to place eighteen third graders on AA teams, which are made up of second graders. (Fourth graders fill out the AAA roster.) Parents were not notified of the split ahead of time. Instead, I learned about it when getting my son's team assignment.

Both Chris and I were disappointed the third graders had been separated, and that Chris had been put in the lower of the two levels. Before the season began, all the kids had tried out at an indoor facility and were ranked on ability based on their performance that afternoon. However, a kid can have a bad day or just be rusty from not having played baseball in nearly nine months. So it's an imperfect system.

Happily, though, Chris was called up by a AAA team to fill in for an absent player the very first weekend of play. Ranked at the top of the eighteen third graders in AA, he was among the first to be tapped for a call-up. It proved to be a great experience. The AAA coach is terrific, and several of my sons' friends are on the team. Meanwhile, Chris held his own and then some, hitting a stand-up double and RBI and later scoring the tying run before the next player came across home plate for the win. He did so well, in fact, that I asked the coach in all seriousness: "Can this be a permanent call-up?" Unfortunately, the answer was no. The system just doesn't work that way.

He didn't play as well the second time the same team called him up. But that game took place the day before he hit the grand slam in his AA game, so it proved to be a terrific warm-up.

In discussing the split of third graders with other parents at the beginning of the season, phrases like "big fish in a small pond" and "chance to shine" were bandied about in an attempt to put a positive spin on the fact that some children were assigned to a lesser team. But as the season draws to a close in less than two weeks, I'm finding these tritisms have some merit. A friend's son in AAA still feels intimidated by the power of some of the fourth graders and the speed at which they can pitch. Yet my son feels good as he strides up to bat. When he watches the ball and connects with it, his confidence soars. He is proving himself as a hitter and, as a parent, I couldn't be prouder.

Compartmentalization: An Effective Coping Mechanism

I am perpetually behind. It's just a fact of my existence as a full-time single mother with no built-in support network. A given. A fait accompli . . . or, as it were, a fait inaccompli.

Playing catchup in so many areas of my life both large and small could make me crazy. Indeed, it has felt like it would countless times in the near-decade that I've been a full-time single mother. The pressure from too many responsibilities and the frustration from things not going right build, and I sense that I'm going to explode.


But something has happened to me recently to alter that. I hesitate to call it a permanent change or one I can successfully bring about in every circumstance when it would be useful. But it is a change I am very happy with, and it seems to have rewired my brain. Gasp. Did I just say that? First, a disclaimer. I did not grow up a medically- or psychologically-oriented person. Quite the opposite: I was raised in Christian Science. However, I have always been highly observant and self-aware, even more so since seeking psychotherapy following my mother's passing. Not to mention that figuring out how to deal with my complex present life without going out of my mind has been Job No. 1 for a very long time. So while my brain "rewiring" may not be exactly medical, it sure feels that way to me because it represents such a welcome departure from the way I have handled responsibility overload in the past.

What change am I talking about? Compartmentalization. I've learned how to compartmentalize.

I can now separate issues in my mind without the sum total of them steamrolling me. I've learned how to address one issue at a time, put it down (or back in its "compartment"), then pick up another. I am making progress on many of them, though it is slow and perhaps not even noticeable. But I reassure myself that the progress is there, and I am taking the right course of action.

Growing up, I took the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was a worrier. A serious worrier. I worried about my parents arguing. I worried about taking tests, writing papers, winning tennis matches, getting through swim-team practice, and remembering my lines in plays. I worried about talking to boys and friends liking me. As if that wasn't enough, I also worried about many things a child shouldn't have to worry about such as the financial condition of my family after my father would hit the roof over mundane expenses or a piddling motel bill. (They were piddling in the '70s.) I worried about a plethora of issues. And, of course, I worried about my father's hair-trigger temper as well.

Not surprisingly, I was a horrible sleeper, an insomniac. I felt rested one day in about every nine. I kid you not. Hard to believe, but my father was an even worse sleeper than me. He had undiagnosed sleep apnea, I'm convinced. I came to this conclusion after researching and writing a story on the condition for a daily newspaper I worked for many years ago. Unfortunately, my father died not long before my assignment, so my findings came too late to help him.

Thankfully, I am no longer the same kind of worrier or sleeper. My transition began after my mother died in early '95. It was an issue of learning to relax -- transforming my whole being by silencing her "do's" and "don'ts" and "why aren't you this's?" and "when are you that's?" When someone with a dominant personality has been in your daily life for a very long time, his or her absence through death doesn't automatically remove that person's words or tone of voice from your head. But they do fade over time and so does the power they long held over you. When that eventually happened for me, I was finally able to sleep better than ever before and help myself in countless other ways that opened a door to a much-improved me.

My psychotherapist in Seattle -- I moved there after my mother's death -- referred to my then-new adult-orphan state as "a second chance at life." In all honesty, I couldn't disagree.

Taken to the extreme, compartmentalization can be highly detrimental. It could be employed as a tactic to deny, avoid, or erase one's feelings to the point at which they one day explode out of their "compartments." But, if used judiciously as a coping mechanism, compartmentalization can be very effective in helping one manage simultaneous tasks, emotions, and even crises without going off the rails.

Personally, I think it has to be one of the greatest skills a mother can have. It's right up there in my book with multitasking. Mothers learn to become adept at doing many things at once, and compartmentalization helps them prioritize their duties along with set aside the emotions associated with each that would otherwise detract from their ability to carry out said duties. In other words, it's how you can get the kids off to school, do the laundry, shop for groceries, clean the house, perform your job, and host a party with your marriage in crisis and your elderly parent in the hospital with a stroke. You must multitask to maintain your daily routine for your family. Yet you must also keep your inner self together. The two go hand in hand.

Recently, someone on a single-mothers Facebook page I'm on asked the group: "What characteristic do you have that has surprised you most since being a mom?" As one of the women with the oldest children, I wanted to give a very specific answer. I wrote, "The ability to bounce back from extreme sleep deprivation and years of chronic fatigue syndrome." Not fully satisfied with my reply, I then added: "Also the ability to compartmentalize."

If you are a full-time single mother like me, learning to compartmentalize is essential because your job of 24/7 caregiving is/can be (depending on your level of free help and/or finances) overwhelming. So many balls are in the air at once all the time. It is difficult to keep everything on track and when you can't -- hate to break it to you, but it's inevitable -- you need to be able to (for the most part) keep your cool and carry on. You can't fall apart, and you can't quit. There is a time and mental place for everything in your mind. The challenge is to keep the various aspects of your life, duties that you juggle, and emotions that surface separate in your thinking. Approach them one at a time, and try not to stress out over the big picture. It can be very daunting, so look at it in parts.

Easier said than done, I know. Oh, boy, don't I know! 

Being Game

When you are a single mother by choice, you do the work of both a mother and father. You wear two hats, and you are keenly aware of it every single day. If you weren't already familiar with your strengths and weaknesses, full-time single motherhood will rapidly make them very apparent to you. I guarantee it!

I have many failings when it comes to performing this gargantuan two-headed job: I am woefully not domestic, and I am also not mechanical. And that's just for starters. So please don't ask me to bake an apple pie or put together Ikea furniture. (For the record, I have done the latter, but that was during a period in my life when I had a great deal of time, patience, and no distractions from children.)

However, one characteristic I do have as a parent and that I am quite proud of is "being game." I think of it as being adventurous, fun, or a little crazy or quirky in a good way. It's a quality that doesn't get discussed much in SMC circles, but I think it should be. Much more attention is paid to such practical subjects as financial stability, nurturing issues, the daddy question, support-network relationships, etc. and rightfully so.

But I feel that if a woman is going to choose to have a child or children on her own, she also ought to make an attempt to provide a happy experience for them beyond the "routine." Routine, in this case, I mean as the status quo of childhood leisure time -- sports clinics, teams, lessons; Disney vacations; beach visits; and the like. All of these non-school activities are fantastic for the child. Don't get me wrong. My boys have partaken in them for years -- with the exception of Disneyworld, which we still haven't visited.

In a traditional family, often one parent is more game than the other, and that is okay. The pressure is off the less game parent because the more game parent can pick up the slack. As a result, the child or children of this couple benefit because they do have a game parent. However, when there is just one parent in the family, the onus is on that one parent to be game because she or he doesn't have a partner who can provide that quality to the offspring.

I try to be game, but I find it fairly easy to be game because I already am game. Granted, not all the time and not in every circumstance. For example, I am not game to voluntarily drive a long distance through a snowstorm -- even to go skiing, which I love. I am not game to allow one son to take sailing lessons before I feel comfortable with his swimming ability. And I am not game (at least for now) to give my other son live chickens for Christmas. In these instances, issues of safety, responsibility overload, and/or cost take precedence.

Exactly what do I mean by being game? Being game can take many forms. As an example, this week I entered my first-ever eating contest. Yes, you read that right. Eating contest! What on earth possessed me to do such an odd thing? You must wonder. Did I think I was Takeru Kobayashi downing hot dogs on Coney Island? Hardly! This just seemed like a wild thing to do. It's called "Walk the Plank," aka The Captain Hook's Pizza Challenge. A pizza place we love in a neighboring community would award a tee shirt and free large pizza with three toppings to anyone who could eat said pizza in thirty minutes flat.

Game on!

Did I believe I could accomplish it? No, but I was game to try. I don't binge eat, and I don't pick at my food either. I have a healthy appetite. Still, I could only stomach one quarter of the pie. Lettuce and extra tomato sauce were good choices for toppings, but extra cheese most certainly was not, I quickly discovered. Too heavy and too filling!

My boys were amused to watch and content to be eating their own small pepperoni pizza at another table (because there wasn't room at mine). At one point, I had an audience of about eight people including two ladies who delayed their return trip home to Ossipee, NH, to see if I could succeed.

My timekeeper -- a cheerful, bespectacled restaurant employee named Al -- called my attempt "valiant." I'll take it! Only two other people (teenage boys) had entered the contest, and they both quit after consuming half a pizza. I was glad I gave it a shot, even after learning the next day that I'd put on almost two and a half pounds for the week. (For the record, I don't believe all of it was pizza weight, but some of it definitely was!)

But the point is: I was willing to go outside my comfort zone and possibly (or probably) look foolish just to have a good time. My sons got a kick out of it -- my large, football-playing third grader wants to make his own attempt -- and we made a goofy memory together that we will recall years in the future. I can just hear my sons now: "Mom, do you remember the time you tried to eat a giant lettuce-covered pizza all by yourself? That was so funny!"

Being game can also mean agreeing to camp with the kids in the backyard, allowing a group of teenage boys to partially bury a willing younger son in the sand under a mom's watchful eye, taking an older son down an expert ski slope when he is ready and the snow is just right, etc.

It's about being up for the unexpected, being spontaneous, being in the moment, and being open to new and offbeat experiences. As a parent, I personally think it's the only way to be because it models for the child an approach to life that is fun, positive, and adaptable to the circumstances. The alternative is, well, being an old fuddy-duddy.

And who wants to be that?

Hitting the Deer

You've heard of "hitting the wall," the point of complete exhaustion. Unfortunately, I've used that cliche far too often the past nearly ten years of full-time single motherhood. As of today, however, I have a new stock phrase to call upon to describe the same condition though, if possible, a more severe version because it suggests a fatigue so incapacitating that one cannot even avoid striking a living creature while driving down the road! When you hear someone say "I hit the wall," you think to yourself I hear you, I know what you mean, I've been there. But when you hear someone say "I hit the deer," you really pay attention. "You WHAT? You hit a deer? You actually hit a real deer? Oh, my God! Are you okay? Is the deer okay? Is your car okay? That's really scary!"

No kidding. It IS really scary. I know because it happened to me today. (FYI, I am okay. The deer appeared to be okay as it continued bounding toward the woods with its companion. And my car also seems to be okay.) First off, the accident was completely unavoidable, and it ended in the best result possible given the circumstances. Here's what happened: I was driving the speed limit from my town to the neighboring town when two deer leapt into my path at a bend in the road. I had a split second to brake, if that. Swerving would have been extremely dangerous and surely would have resulted in striking the first and larger animal broadside or going off the narrow road. I did not consider turning the wheel in that brief moment. Thank God no one was coming in the opposite direction or we would have wound up in a two-car/two-deer pileup! I could have been killed. As it was, I just clipped the backside of the second deer. If I'd had more distance between my vehicle and the animals, both deer would have cleared my front end. Unfortunately, they were just too close to me.

Though not at fault, I feel that hitting the deer was truly the culmination of a spate of unpleasant events that have plagued me for a while now. In other words, it is an apt metaphor for where things have been heading. They have been escalating, and not in a good way. I'm referring to a child's behavior, the condition of our home, and my financial situation among other aspects of my unpaid job singlehandedly managing this household of three. But many other unusual and undesirable events have also been happening since the beginning of the year. In no particular order, they include incurring nearly $3,000 worth of automotive repairs and car-rental fees, running out of gas on the highway, losing heat in my home during Nemo, forgetting my wallet at Staples (resulting in an hour-long anxiety attack and missed Easter egg hunt), losing two different earrings two days in a row, being put on Facebook probation for sending too many friend requests, and dropping my iPad on the pavement before stepping back onto it. Plenty more oddball occurrences have befallen me recently. These are just the ones I remember off the top of my head!

Why does this keep happening? For one, I am a person who seems to be a magnet for drama. It has pretty much always been this way. However, it has intensified considerably since becoming a full-time single mother and has grown even more pronounced of late to the point at which if someone had asked me if I thought I might hit a deer today, I would have laughed wryly and answered "YES!" -- as unlikely as that scenario would have been and considering the fact that I had never hit a deer before in my entire life.

Yeah. It has gotten that bad.

Motherhood can be grueling, and if you don't have a spouse or partner assisting you (and providing a second income!) or a support network of family or friends -- even just a few or one reliable person -- willing and able to give you free help when you need it, then 24/7 single motherhood IS grueling. Period. (Of course, if you have loads of money to hire substantial at-home help, then all bets are off. You are the apple to everyone else's orange. Lucky you!)

The single-mother experience ebbs and flows, though for me personally I am still waiting for the flow. For most of the past nearly ten years of it, I have fallen into the former category. Since I have lived in my present community twice as long as my previous two, I have had an easier time finding people to pitch in the past few years. I have made better friends here. Still, I really don't like to ask for help (who does?), and I try not to do it if at all possible.

Single motherhood is very intense for me just about every single day. My boys are in elementary school -- third and first grades -- so my reality is homework, school projects, field trips, evening programs, sports teams, martial arts, playdates, sleepovers (for the uninformed, seven year olds do have sleepovers), birthday parties, and more. As if that's not enough, throw in acting opportunities separate from school and many miles away (even out of state) and multi-day camping trips all over New England, and you have a pretty good idea what we are up to year-round. The schedule is full. Scratch that, overloaded. And it is nearly always about my sons. (Note to self: see if you can tweak that a bit.)

But while I am the facilitator of all of the activities -- the person who finds them, registers for them, pays for them, buys the uniforms for them, keeps track of the schedules for them, drives my sons to them, watches them, sometimes helps at them, and prepares my boys for them (playing catch, choreographing a piece, reviewing spelling, correcting homework, etc.) -- I also have to fit in my own life: teaching, getting ready for class, critiquing student work, blogging every ten days, accepting an occasional extra job or focus-group opportunity for spare cash, and submitting query letters and manuscripts and more to agents and editors in an ongoing effort to get my book-length memoir published. Yowza! Of course, there's also washing laundry, putting it away, buying groceries, making meals, packing lunches or lunch money, picking up the house, teaching right from wrong, comforting and disciplining, taking my children to dentist and other appointments, and on and on.

It is an endless list and the reason why being a mother is the hardest job in the world. Given this backdrop, it is crucial for mothers of all stripes and especially single mothers to apply the brakes once in a while so as not to "hit the deer."

Go out to a matinee. Have lunch with a friend. Walk on a beach. Have a massage. Take yoga. Wolf down a decadent dessert. Leave on a girls' weekend away and do karaoke in the local bar. If it feels good, makes you happy, relaxes you, or provides a brief escape from your daily pressures, then by all means indulge yourself. Do it as much as you can.

If you don't practice self-care at least once in a while, you will go "crazy." Maybe not in the clinical sense (though maybe you will) but surely in the teetering-on-the-edge sense. The mother, particularly the one without a partner or other free help, will feel like she is living inside a pressure cooker or vise with pressure bearing down on her from all sides. It makes her depleted, irritable, and unable to tolerate anything else thrown her way such as a flat tire, missing car keys, or petulant child. Her sense of calm and equilibrium will be replaced by excessive anxiety, imbalance, and a disordered mind. Regretfully, I know this state intimately. Take my word for it: it is horrible to experience.

Don't let yourself get to the point of hitting the deer. Carve out break times to give you pleasure and find moments of peace so you can manage to keep the crazy away . . . or at least at bay.

Love Letter to My Adopted City

Dear Boston,

As you begin to heal following the horrific marathon bombings followed by the gunfights and lockdown later last week, let me take this opportunity to tell you how much you mean to me. It pained me greatly to see you suffering from the killing of innocent adults, a child, and a young police officer as well as the injuring of more than 270 others. Evil held you and your surrounding communities in its tight grip for an entire workweek, disrupting your routine and the general peace you and your residents enjoy and expect. Thankfully, the malicious parties have been subdued -- either by being slain or captured.

The time to dress your wounds and comfort you has begun. Your finest and strongest citizens are working diligently to protect you, maintain you, and improve you. They along with federal authorities are turning over every stone to uncover just how the perpetrators were able to pull off the vicious attacks on you in the hopes that both the lone surviving terrorist may be brought to justice and such heinous acts may never be repeated within your borders.

The unthinkable occurred at your proudest of moments on a very special day. Marathon Monday and Patriots' Day. A sacred doubleheader of a day testing and celebrating the world's top long-distance runners as well as a state holiday commemorating the anniversary of the first battles of the Revolutionary War that led to America's independence.

For ambitious spectators, it was a full day. First up: the 5:30 a.m. reenactment in Lexington (Concord's was too late if you were trying to make the 11:05 a.m. Red Sox game). This year the game was played against the Tampa Bay Rays. It was Jackie Robinson Day. And, finally, the marathon -- the world's oldest and most prestigious. (The finish line is walkable from Fenway Park.) Hopefully, these fans already filed their 1040s because it was also Tax Day, April 15.

As it was the beginning of spring vacation, my boys and I were lazing around the house. We had no plans. It was a gorgeous day and just the right temperature for the elite competitors one hour south. Turning on the TV, I saw a Portuguese woman with a long, swinging ponytail running well ahead of the pack. It was inspiring to watch her, though I have no marathon aspirations myself as I have a bad knee containing only twenty percent of its protective cartilage. The camera then cut to Tatyana McFadden, a Russian-born Paralympian, as she accepted her trophy for winning the women's wheelchair division. She looked so happy.

Around midday I made plans for my boys to play with a friend's boys on a field behind the elementary school. Though they had gotten up at an ungodly hour to make the roughly fifty-minute drive to the Lexington reenactments, her boys were not the least bit tired. They were raring to practice for the Little League season beginning this weekend. By mid-afternoon, we were back home. I called up Facebook. The first post I read on my newsfeed indicated rather cryptically that there'd been some kind of disturbance at your marathon. I didn't stay on my iPad any longer to learn more. I rushed to the TV. Like everyone watching that day, I could not believe my eyes. The news about you was shocking, surreal, and heartbreaking. Little did anyone know it was just the beginning of your terror-filled workweek.

I love you, Boston, and I always have. You are my adopted city.

I met you over Columbus Day Weekend 1980 when visiting friends at colleges in your area. I arrived at the bus station a day late because I had changed my plans and decided to hitchike alone and for the first time from my college in central, western Vermont. After thumbing a couple of rides, I wound up in the back of a pickup then its cab after it started to rain. The male driver took me to a bus station in Brattleboro. Alas, too late. Missed the last bus of the day by five minutes. Next he drove me to a couple of motels. No vacancy. It was leaf-peeping season! Running out of options, he invited me to his home in nearby South Newfane. A risky proposition, indeed. Yet I felt I could trust him when he discussed his wife and kids. I had spent enough time talking to him and observing him in the cab to come to this conclusion. At their house, I borrowed the family's phone to call the childhood friend I was supposed to stay with at your namesake college. She called me "crazy" when I told her about my trip. I couldn't disagree. That night I had a wonderful time with the warm, caring family. Dinner featured fresh greens and tomatoes from their garden and applesauce made of apples from their trees. A giant pancake breakfast was served up in the morning before the father drove me back to the bus station. He stayed long enough to watch me board, just in case I had a hankering to try hitchhiking again. (Hint: I did.)

Looking back, I realize how naive and lucky I was. Still, meeting you after twenty-four hours of adventure ensured that I would like you. A LOT. It was a very good first impression, and you have not disappointed me since. My Boston College friend took me to Faneuil Hall where I sampled my first fried dough. (More than thirty years later I still love the messy treat.) We browsed the shops, and Claire encouraged me to buy a teddy bear I liked. I named it Claire Bear. I still have it. That weekend I stopped by Harvard to visit two friends from my all-girls Connecticut boarding school -- Sheilah from Hong Kong who just last year singlehandedly took my son's Flat Stanley around the world and Connie, a senior-year roommate who died of a rare cancer at the age of forty-four. I wanted to also get together with Eleanor at Wellesley, but I ran out of time. My stay in your area was rushed due to my late arrival. But I had no regrets regarding my transportation method of choice.

Post-graduation you were the first major city I lived in. I had landed a job at the "Christian Science Monitor" and had taken a one-bedroom apartment above the kitchen of a cool Asian restaurant on Columbus Avenue. (Appropriate given my Columbus Day Weekend introduction to the city.) Two years later my bichon frise Sparkplug and I moved from the South End to Beacon Hill to be closer to a friend from boarding school who I had reconnected with over an Appalachian Mountain Club trip to New Hampshire the weekend O.J. led police on that slow-speed chase. Rentals in the ritzy neighborhood were steeper, so I downgraded to a studio not far from Louisburg Square where Secretary of State John Kerry has long resided. My space had formerly been servants' quarters for the neighborhood's blue blood population and featured a bathroom (truly a water closet) off the building's stairs. Yes, outside the apartment. But I didn't mind.

During this time, I left work on the Family and Medical Leave Act to manage my ailing mother's Christian Science care. It was an intense, exhausting, and painful period and continued to be so for many months to come. One of the few bright lights in my life at that time was an AMC rock climbing course I was taking in your city. A couple of cousins encouraged me to continue with the class despite my heavy responsibilities before and after my mother's death and the cracked rib I sustained carrying her when she fell into my arms. In fact, I was top-roping your awesome Quincy Quarries and afterward having a beer at a nearby Irish pub while she was drawing her last breaths.

After my leave ended, I left the newspaper to handle her estate and the sale of her house, relocating to Seattle by late fall for Chapter II of my life: Post-Parents. My West Coast adventure didn't last long. Some four years later I came back to you to attend an MFA program in creative writing. This time I took an apartment across the Charles River in Cambridge. My first son came along a few years later, thanks to your world-renowned medical care. My second was born during our brief stint in Marblehead on the North Shore. And today our family resides on Cape Ann, a little further up the coast. I can't express my gratitude enough to your excellent reproductive endocrinologists who made it possible for a single woman to become a mother two times over in her forties.

All told, I have lived in your area for roughly seventeen years before and after my Seattle experiment. Almost as long as my childhood hometown. I have celebrated or suffered through countless milestones in Beantown and its environs. The Impressionist paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts have lifted my spirits when I felt blue. Riding the T has been a salve for loneliness. Nothing compares to taking your firstborn to see the Green Monster up close, watching your dog romp on the historic Boston Common, or laughing hysterically with a visiting boyfriend at The Comedy Studio in Harvard Square. I have had many, many good times in and around your fair city.

I am so proud of you and in so much awe of you. Keep strong, mighty Boston. You will always prevail.

Love,

Shelby