My almost daughter-in-law Emily achieved one of her dreams when she qualified for the Boston Marathon. Prior to that she and our son Bayen had run the Philadelphia Marathon, the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington D.C. and others. But they lived in Boston and their dream was to run in their city, with their friends, down the streets they knew and loved their whole adult lives.
Bayen didn’t qualify this time, but he couldn’t have been more excited on the day of the race as he manned a cheering station with a group of friends near the finish line. There he could wait for and watch not only Emily, but many other athletes from their Cambridge running club as they finished the race. Emily’s best time to date, coming into the Boston Marathon, was a little under four hours, about the pace that would have put her just about where and when the bombs blew up.
Did my heart stop in terror when I heard the awful news? Yes. Was I terrified about Emily’s and Bayen’s safety? No.
Fortunately for our family, Emily and Bayen were at the Boston Marathon last year; this year they moved to the west coast and were watching the race (and many of their friends and old running mates) from afar, like the rest of the world, when that despicable act of terror happened.
As my phone suddenly started ringing and beeping with anxious inquiries about their whereabouts and safety, my immediate reaction was overwhelming gratitude that they were safe and that I would not be one of the hysterical parents/friends/children/spouses who didn’t know the fate of their loved ones. I had been there before, on Sept. 11, 2001, and still recall the cold creeping horror of not knowing.
On that awful morning I had dropped off another son at the train station in Wilmington early in the morning. Here visiting from his home in London, Brad and his partner were on the way to New York that other fateful morning to take care of some business before returning to England. After leaving them at the station I continued on to State College, listening blissfully to an audio book for the whole three-hour trip. When I arrived at my meeting mid-morning and discovered what had happened, all I could remember was Brad saying – as they exited the car – that they would arrive at Penn Station around ten a.m. and would head directly over to their American bank at the World Trade Center.
We were lucky that time too. As it turned out, their train was late so they walked over to the Wilmington Bus Station and their bus was stopped on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel because of the tragedy that had just unfolded. That time, and again this week my emotions, my heart, my thoughts were so jumbled all I could think of was “there but for the grace of God go I….
And that is what I am still thinking today. Of gratitude. For life. For luck. For fate. For the lives we live every day and the days we don’t stop to be grateful, to be thankful for everything that could go wrong that doesn’t; for everything bad that could happen but doesn’t. At least to us. At least this time.
Today, at least, I am taking the time to think about these things. I hope we all are.
* Lee Miller welcomes responses. Please email them to leemiller229@gmail.com
About Lee Miller
Lee Miller began her writing career with four books about Pennsylvania/east coast wines and the creation of Wine East magazine. She then went on to found the Chaddsford Winery with her husband Eric, where she turned her pen to promotion, advertising, public relations and marketing of their successful business venture for 30 years. Last year Lee co-wrote the new wine book, “The Vintner’s Apprentice” with Eric, and retired from the Chaddsford Winery to pursue other interests. She is currently working on a book about her life in the wine industry and exploring the retirement life. Her goal in writing a column for Chadds Ford Live is to generate dialogue and elicit reader response.
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