What Is Freedom?

When I woke up Saturday morning, my lingering feeling was this: Freedom.

On Thursday night, the most tense events Boston has seen in decades began to unfold in the city’s surrounding suburbs. Police had been investigating the Monday bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line all week, and on Thursday, they finally released footage of who they deemed to be the suspects.

The tape was grainy, the photos not exactly clear, but it was enough to know that if anyone had seen these two guys — who looked to be no more than local college students — they would quickly be caught.

Still, in a week that had been one big, long chunk of mourning and disbelief, no one was ready for anything to happen. Things had unfolded so slowly, and even those who watched the video three or four times before heading to bed Thursday night figured the pieces would begin to come together slowly, here and there, before an arrest was made.

Instead, the suspects shot a police officer at the MIT campus in Cambridge, carjacked an SUV, and drove into the night, leading police on a chase that wound through local neighborhoods until it devolved into a bomb-throwing firefight in Watertown in the middle of darkness.

On Friday morning, residents of Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and several surrounding suburbs woke to the news that one suspect had been killed by police, but the other had escaped — driving over the other suspect, his older brother, in his haste — and was somewhere in the area. Residents of those towns were told to stay indoors — no, commanded to — as Boston, for the first time in history save for extreme weather situations, told its citizens that they were not to step foot outside. A manhunt was on. The city had been shut down. Everyone was to stay put while the cops did their jobs.

The locals were only too happy to obey. While a typical Massachusetts resident will forge ahead through 12 inches of snow, danger is something else, and Monday showed just how dangerous these two were. With the police clearly on edge about the entire situation, and with them having already chased the culprits for some eight hours, there was no question everyone would stay home.

But as Friday wore on, it became difficult. While people can plan ahead for a snowstorm, packing away food and such, an impromptu day in the apartment gets old fast. While the news was coming in rapidly for hours, with more details surfacing about the suspects, that soon slowed. Cabin fever set in, with questions: If they haven’t caught him by now, could they?

Around 6 p.m., the lockdown order was lifted by a downcast police chief, and that was where the fear that had eased away earlier in the day came back. They were admitting they didn’t have him but telling everyone to go back on the streets. If it wasn’t safe before, why would it be now? Everyone was fine being brave and returning to their regular lives on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s because the bombs had gone off, the victims rushed to hospital, and the debris cleared. This danger was still in process.

I decided to take a walk. I wanted to do something, and I especially wanted to do something where I could come back and find that maybe something had changed. I knew my neighborhood was safe, but my feet and eyes needed to help. A quick swing around a few blocks confirmed it: People were out, and music was playing. It was quiet and eerie, a few stray raindrops falling and a storm coming in, but it was safe. Even the wail of sirens across the river, and the many red and blue lights, didn’t shake me. The entire police population of Massachusetts was here. They just had to keep working.

But I did wonder what we do now. If this kid was still out there with his guns and bombs, what do you do? It’s brave to go out after an attack and just keep living, but it’s foolhardy to charge into an area where danger hasn’t yet been contained. I felt complete confidence where I was, but I was already thinking of what areas I would avoid, and how many days it would take before we turned grumpy on the cops and asked them why they hadn’t nabbed this guy right away.

By the time I returned home, however, I learned that the recent batch of sirens I heard were fresh for a reason — shots had been fired in Watertown, and they had found the suspect again. Within three hours, which flew past like minutes, they had him in custody. Danger averted. Life restored. Heroes praised. Celebration commenced.

I did another swing around the neighborhood then, this time to see the people light on their feet and smiling. Crowds bubbled up around Boston — huge, cheering gaggles of people. Bars were packed; impromptu parades were held for the cops as they drove home.

That was it. They did it — we did it. The story had ended the way it should. All the cliches about Boston proved true, and our officers were truly the finest.

One of my roommates turned to me in this and asked about the patriotism showing up on the TV. She asked why this was a victory for America, and whether people were right to be waving flags and saying the usual pro-U.S. things they say at a time like this.

I tried to explain that this is a victory for America because the point of terrorism is to paralyze life, and to alter regular, everyday democracy. She was concerned that this kind of patriotism is what gets people so mad at us in the first place, and I concurred, but I said that stopping it in the face of something like this would be wrong. For all the cheesiness — and, let’s admit it, misguided or cheap patriotism — at such a time, people have the essence of it right. People who attack America and its ideals are attacking the ability to be free — to create laws, to spread good, to have democracy, to glutton ourselves, to spend hours of our days watching sports, to defend our amendments, to be uber-American, all the time.

It’s hard for me to explain how I grasped the American-ness of this moment, and why it was right to celebrate the U.S., but let me just say this: When September 11 happened, and everyone talked about what terrorists were trying to do and how you counter that by going back to normal life, I didn’t really get it. I lived through September 11, at an age where I comprehended what was going on, and I read news and analysis every year after. It was only that to me, though — test cases, and information.

But on Friday, I lived the threat of terrorism, and I lived the American response. Fear and danger are not tolerated in this country. Our law enforcement is geared to go crazy when terror tries to dominate us, and to take it down. They aren’t just defending our homeland, and the ideals and values of this country. They’re also protecting us — little, insignificant us, the ones who want to hop on a train or walk down the street without fear. I still believe America is that place because of what I saw this week. The people who protect us do not mess around.

I discovered freedom in the most real way Saturday morning, when I went to the corner store and bought The Boston Globe and a Coke and then walked down my street, through a park, across a busy road (I jaywalked!), and next to the Charles River. I looked across the river and watched dozens of cars zooming down Interstate 90 and Storrow Drive, and I glanced behind me and saw the newly rebuilt Boston University bridge, and the beautiful Prudential Center Tower (it casts it shadow over Copley Square) in the distance.

No one in Boston had to think to himself or herself, “I’m going to go out today and be brave so the terrorists don’t win.” We’re from Boston. We’re workers. How many days have I come home tired and stressed and thought, “I just want to lay down, or cry, or read,” and instead, I move on to the next thing and just keep working? That is Boston. That is a distinctly Northeast spirit. We don’t work to make a statement. We work because there’s things to do, and we’re Americans, and we’re going to keep doing them until the job is done. That’s why we were back at work on Tuesday, and those are the people I saw driving Saturday. It’s less a gigantic statement we’re all struggling to make and more the way of life that we will not let die.

I don’t know what’s behind terrorism or what people are thinking or what America is or what they’re trying to do to it. I don’t know how our patriotism plays into the terrorism equation. I also don’t know that it matters.

But I do know that Saturday morning, I was super-patriotic. I wanted to give out high-fives and talk about it and jump around and shout. I knew what had challenged us Friday, and I knew what had been done to overcome it. All this stuff I read for years — I understand that on a firsthand level now. I got this crazy sense of what it means to be an American, and why that’s not bad. I was smiling. I was ready to go again.

I was free.