Compassion tangled with pain, with anger, and it was all stitched together in the caps of an unlikely baseball team. When is a Red Sox hat more than just a hat?īut quiet doesn’t last long in Boston. People came together just to breathe next to other people. It was quiet in the way a community becomes after tragedy. Time moved slowly strangers made eye contact everyone felt more present than in the impatient rush of a regular day. In the aftermath of April 15, deep compassion rose from the cracks of a city famous for cold weather and cold people. Suddenly, wearing a piece of Boston demanded a responsibility greater than pride for a sports team. I had grown so accustomed to the screech of the green line at Boylston, I couldn’t sleep when it stopped. A four-day search for the marathon bombers left me staring out my dorm room window onto an empty Boston Common, heavy with silence that didn’t belong. Just as I started to believe I really knew the city, it was irrevocably changed on a cloudy April Monday.
I wore it every day as I fell madly in love with being a Bostonian. Crisp and clean like the air in September during my freshman year of college. It can also keep the mountain sun off your face. A Red Sox hat can be more than a hat, it can be a symbol of resiliency, of community, of time and place.
