Out of the Blue

...delight comes into your life.

During my freshman year at Harvard, I ran for hours every day. I would set out for a run - six miles, ten miles, twenty - in howling blizzards in the middle of the night, sometimes with my backpack full of books still strapped to my shoulders. I ran because I needed to; it muted my anxieties and eased my loneliness. Running was the only thing I did that year that was not completely dominated by fear, or perhaps it was the only time I responded to my omnipresent fears in a way that felt like escape. I ran no matter what the weather, and the winter was terrible. There were times when the wind would blow be backwards or sideways in midstride. There were days when the tips of my toes froze black and I had to wrap pieces of plastic bags around my hands so that my fingers wouldn't do the same.

In March, as the temperature rose above freezing and the sun began to linger beyond midafternoon for the first time in months, running became an intoxicating pleasure. A Boston Marathoner told me that you could tell it was springtime in New England because the saps were beginning to run. He was right. The warmer weather brought hordes of joggers into my usual path along the Charles River, and I began to look for less crowded routes. That is why, one Sunday in early April, I found myself in the Boston Common, a wide, grassy park in the middle of the city. I had already run across Cambridge, over the long bridge by MIT, and through the seedy Boston neighbourhoods near Chinatown. The city was unusually empty that morning, very still in the warm dawn light.

I reached the Common at about 8am, and as I jogged onto the path beneath the yellow-green leaves of budding trees, I began to notice strange things. There were people in the park, but not the usual gangs of spiky-haired teenagers and scruffy homeless beggars. The people were in groups, all elaborately clothed; the men and boys in suits, the women and girls in dresses the colour of flowers. There was a kind of quiet decorum to the whole scene that was quite unlike anything I had seen in Boston. A woman in a lavender gown went past me, pushing a stroller. Tied to the stroller handle was one end of a braided leash. At the other end walked a small dog in a chequered vest and a tie. As they went by, I saw that the stroller contained not a baby but a large gray rabbit wearing a straw bonnet. I stopped dead in my tracks - something I never did during a run - and stared.

It was then that the sound began. I felt it before I heard it. The soft ground seemed to swell like something breathing, and through the soles of my feet, up my legs, and into my body rose a thrumming vibration that seemed to bond me into the heart. The exquisite sensation grew more and more intense for several seconds before I began to hear it. It was the clearest, purest tone I had ever heard. As it rose in pitch, I finally realized that it was the sound of a bell.

Boston's bell makers (like Paul Revere) were famous for good reason. I have heard many bells in my time, but the best of them sound like bashing cooking pots next to the bells I heard that morning. The first one, the deep and almost inaudible one, was joined within minutes by dozens of others, but I never heard anything that sounded like a clapper striking metal. Nor did the sounds seem to come from any particular direction. Instead, the air simply filled with sustained, meltingly sweet tones, like angels singing. The whole scene was so strange and beautiful that tears began to run down my cheeks, faster than I could stop them. I stood in the Common surrounded by this glorious sound, watching the strange loveliness of beribboned people and animals, and seriously debated whether or not I had been transported to some bizzare but benevolent alternate universe.

By the time I got back to my dorm and realized that it was Easter Sunday, the impression had already been made. Despite the perfectly rational, ordinary reasons for that moment in the Boston Common, I had stored it in my memory as a glimpse into a magical world, and that image would never quite go away.

Martha Beck, Expecting Adam