Watertown, Massachusetts. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Boston, Massachusetts.
I’m watching CNN like so many others, and occasionally checking Twitter as this story unfolds.
More than anything, I’m stunned and confused by all we don’t know, operating – like you – according to a view of motivation and decency and common sense that makes all of this incomprehensible.
I am also reacting as a mother.
I haven’t been able to reach one of my sons. Whether or not it’s a matter of no cell service, I don’t know. I imagine he’s just fine – inside, like everyone else in his area. He’s certainly not in class; Boston’s all but shut down.
I’m looking at that face of a 19-year old that continues to be shown on television. A teenager.
No, that’s not sympathy. It’s bewilderment.
One version of his face seems to be fairly current. The other shows a kid. Just a kid. And one that his former classmates have referred to as quiet, and as “normal.”
We don’t know what makes a “quiet, normal” kid resort to such a heinous act. The information we’re hearing is conflicting. It’s baffling.
I’m thinking about the families whose lives have been irrevocably and tragically changed this week. I’m thinking of the families in the neighborhoods concerned. I’m thinking of other parents like me, worried about their college students who live on campus in Boston or Cambridge, or in towns that are adjacent.
I’m thinking about the victims of violence, and wondering when it will stop.
I’m thinking about all we don’t know – ever – about what goes on inside a human mind, what twists it, what eases its pain, what pushes an individual to unspeakable acts. But surely assumptions over ethnicity or religion, presumptions over motivations or affiliations – all of this is ill-advised as we, the public, don’t have the full picture.
I’m thinking about that 19-year old, potentially booby-trapped with explosives.
How many more lives? How much longer?
With all we don’t know, we need to let the authorities do their jobs. We need to be circumspect. We need to seek perspective. Eventually, the puzzle pieces will be properly assembled.
he’s the same age as my son… lives running parallel… both in boston just being 19 y.o.s
what turned this kid? it boggles my mind. peace, big little wolf!
I talked to mine, pia. He’s safely tucked inside, with roommates. But I wish the media would stop assuming and leading us in certain directions. It’s premature. And all of this, senseless.
Hi DA,
Why would the pieces be ever assembled in a world where people are systematically misinformed or not informed at all on many things. We don’t know how a normal kid resorts to such heinous act, but are we dull and uninformed on how we let rot to such a great extent that we can’t imagine it.
Case in hand: I learn that these kids come from Chechnia. Gosh, does anybody out there in USA have the slightest idea of the absolute hell to which have been abandoned Chechnia, under one of the most horrible and bloody dictatorship we can think of in the present times?
Yes I know, not interesting for Western journalists, no oil to defend out there, no special interest, so who care that a whole town like Grosny was brought back to dust and ashes. Who cares of massive horrible slaughters, who cares about systematic rapes of women in front of their children their husbands etc., who cares about Russian soldiers ransoming families so that they can just retrieve the bodies of an assassinated father or son and just bury them! All of this under the deafening silence of Western media not letting their citizen know that there are countries where kids and young people are in the process of becoming wild and dangerous beasts from living in hells like we don’t even have a clue.
Hundreds of thousands of unfair war deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan are doing the same job, right now. So, really? We don’t have a clue of what is throwing dangerous and wild wounded beasts in our back yards? Well if we don’t know after all what we have been inflicting to the world, then we will never know.
Of course, these assaults are distressing, horrible and unfair by touching simple innocent citizens, but does it prevent us to reflect on all the imperial unfairness inflicted by powerful Western countries to the world and infuriating its most suffering inhabitants?
Love, BLW. That’s what the world needs now. Love. Kindness. Compassion. More than media coverage, more than violence shoved in our faces every second of every day. Love…
I’m so happy to read you spoke with your son. So unsettling in the midst of senselessness…
Your puzzle pic? Uncanny… I’ve always referred to the healing from our deepest sorrows as a grief puzzle… I used it in Thursday’s piece… Queue Twilight music… 😉
Much of life revolves around learning…coming to understand that which we don’t know… , like the rest of us, though, do wish the process weren’t so painful, sometimes, that violence wasn’t a part of that unknown…
Hugs and healing, BLW…
It is time to step back and let the authorities complete the puzzle – as far as it can be completed. Because the piece that makes someone do something like this – is incomprehensible. How far removed from being human can a human go?
When I was attending the University of Utah, years ago, I danced with Ted Bundy (the serial killer). He was good looking, a bit quiet and charming at the same time. I actually danced with him. He was indicted a few months later. That has always been a chilling lesson to me that we never know who walks amongst us. Not that because of that, we stop living or engaging.
So glad to hear both your boys are safe and accounted for.
Yes, I was just about to write on this as well…I wonder how many of us out there are looking at this, at the suspect, as mothers. My 70-something year old mother says over and over, “How can someone who looks so sweet do this?” I feel the same way…bewildered, to borrow your word, at all the positive, even glowing testimonies of those who knew him. Why? How? Even though he’s been apprehended, there is no victory…just incredible sadness for all those who suffered at his hands and for those who raised and loved him. Like so many people, I am sure, it pains me to wait for the answers, and for answers that may never come or make sense to me.