General Chaos

During a lull at the Berkeley Food Pantry yesterday,  I pulled out my phone and checked the news.

A quiet moment at the desk

First,  I found a puzzling e-mail from a woman in my quilt group reporting that another member, Angie, was safe.  I thought, safe from what?  Then an e-mail from Angie herself, saying she'd  heard both explosions and was only a tenth of a mile from them.

 I'd forgotten she was running in the Boston Marathon.

Quilt group:  Angie is in the front row, far right

More clients were coming in the door with their empty Trader Joe's bags and backpacks, and I was trying to read the story under the table, while I checked them in. Finally,  I clicked off the phone and paid attention to the matter at hand.

Then I went back to my phone to read more, only to be interrupted again, then back on the phone, until I finally turned off the phone altogether.  I sat there trying to help people the best I could, with all the Boston business rattling around in my head.

A blurry picture of Judy at the Pantry a few weeks ago

Besides Angie, there was my friend  Judy, who moved to Boston just last week.  We were really missing her yesterday at the Pantry, where she and I volunteered together for 4-1/2 years.  And then there's my young friend Leah, a student at Tufts, just outside Boston. Where they all okay?

Yes.

Leah on Boston Common last week

Tomorrow we fly to Texas for a week, and the idea of getting on a plane is not appealing, I can tell you, even though Jerry has run through the logic of probable safety.

A month after that, we fly to Boston for Leah's graduation.  In 2010, we were in New York City when someone tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square the day after we'd gone to a show there.

Angie, Judy, Leah, us--regular people who could be at the wrong place at the wrong time.