Chapter 25

When Alex was ten, her parents took her to the Cambridge Esplanade where the Boston Pops and 200,000 people celebrated the nation’s 200th birthday. Along with her sister Paula and the twins—her family linked three blankets together ten yards from the bank of the Charles River, where they snacked on cokes and sausage and pepper subs and pink cotton candy, and while the Pops played the 1812 Overture, with hundreds of excited festive voices all round them them, they waited for the arrival of dusk. When the sky was finally black, the distant barge prepared to begin firing.
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This was the first time Alex saw fireworks, and these fireworks, planned and operated by a world renowned European pyrotechnic specialist, were utterly spectacular. For thirty continuous minutes, high overhead, encompassing a universe of elaborately designed patterns and circles and arrows soaring upward with impeccably executed timing, a canopy of bangs and pops and rockets unleashing massive pulsating colors--whites and greens and reds and yellows and a few precious blues-- shot up and exploding, all at once, in every corner of the sky.
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When it was over, as they walked back to the Arlington Street T stop, Alex scrunched her face and pulled at her mother’s hand.

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“Mom”, she said, “Why did it feel like it would have been ok if we had all died while those fireworks were going off?”

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Her mother, startled, surprised, stopped and turned to face Alex.

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“Honey, some moments are like that. Some people say they feel that way in the presence of God; or when they do good deeds; sometimes it's when you know in every bone in your body that everything is totally perfect in the world”.

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Before Alex could respond, her mother added, “And honey, when you are lucky enough to have moments like that, you let them change you and you hold on to them as long as you can, because they are gifts from straight from God.”

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Thirty four years later, in a sparceroom, on the left side of two shaky twin beds pushed together, Alex remembered the earnest look on her mother's face that night.

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Initially Lily moved tentatively, careful of a fragility she did not know. But there was no need for relearning or readjustment—their bodies remembered every movement and they swayed in unison, pushing forward together. Silently, Alex let Lily guide them both until they lay side by side, two little vessels beside one another, with no past and no moor left to separate them, no questions left to answer, no boundaries left to navigate, no distant shore left to long for. When they let go to breathe, they were both crying.

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“I love you”, Lily said.

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And for the first time without sorrow or secrecy or second-guessing, Alex, thoroughly depleted, softly whispered back, “Me too, Lily. Me too.”