Remembering 9-11

I was in the operations center at Nasdaq (where they run the hardware that the market runs on). I had a software release that was going live that day, so I got there at 8am. There was a large TV in there that always had the news running in the morning, it was a way to see if perhaps it was going to be a heavy trading day because of world events.

When they reported the first plane, our comments were on the line of "how do you not miss something that big?" As 9:30 approached (that's the time the US markets open), the NYSE and the Nasdaq decided to postpone the open until 10:30. Then before 10:30, they decided not to open. That must have been before the NYSE was evacuated and also before they realized how many communication lines would be interrupted by the attacks. (All markets were eventually closed for the entire week as firms scrambled to set up alternate trading sites and arrange new communication lines.)

I spent most of the morning following my VP around to various meetings (standing along the wall with other Leads, in order to answer questions about my system.) I was numb, focusing on work, so much so that when I saw a co-worker crying, I wasn't sure why. I asked if she was OK and she gave me a strange look, I guess she wondered why I was calm. It really didn't hit me until a few days later, like a ton of bricks. Her way was probably better.

Then they decided to evacuate everyone. In the confusion my purse ended up with someone who had already left, and I didn't have my car keys. (The purse had been in my desk in another building and I asked a friend to get it for me.) A co-worker gave me a ride home (it took an hour to get out of the industrial park because everyone in the place was leaving.) We met up with the gal who had my purse and my co-worker took me home.

In the course of the morning, the schools were closed and I had some trouble getting through on my cell phone, but I was able to talk to his aftercare provider to make sure that she'd watch for the bus at the right time. I left Daniel there, because I was going to have to go back to work at some point and didn't know when Blair would be home. That was hard because I wanted to hug my boy very much.

I was waiting in my driveway for my ride when Blair and Daniel drove up. I held onto Daniel for a long time. Then my colleague arrived. A couple of years later, I asked Daniel what he remembered about the day the bad things happened. And he said, "the day the man came and took you away?" It's funny the spin they put on things. I explained that the man had just been giving me a ride to work. But in the intensity of that day, I hadn't thought to reassure him why I was leaving in a strange car with a strange man.

We had to go back to work so the systems could be shut down in an orderly way, because one part of the system was still waiting for market open. Although in a legal sense the markets were closed for the rest of the week, as far as the computers were concerned they were running normally. We did this so that disrupted firms could test their backup systems, new comm lines and the like. We just never sent the transactions to clearing. We also worked with the customers all weekend so that everything was ready when the markets opened the following Monday.

I used to work in the north tower of the Trade Center. Fresh out of school I got a job doing documentation for the state of NY. Since the state owned the building, they used it for offices until better paying tenants moved in. I used to shop in the mall in the basement. The food court was near the PATH train station. The employee cafeteria was only two floors up from us, but because it was on a different bank of elevators, to get there you had to go down to the lobby and back up. From our offices, we had a stunning view uptown that included the Empire State Building. This was back in the early 80's, so it was before the earlier bombing as well.

Afterward, the depression I'd been living with forever and hadn't really noticed or acknowledged, became much worse. The thought of raising my children in a world where this could happen, where it had happened, was overwhelming. But it pushed me to finally do something about it, to admit to myself, to my husband and to my doctor that I was struggling, and to get help.

It also pushed me to sign up for group voice lessons at Adult Ed and eventually for private lessons for a year. It also led to my bosses noticing the way I handled myself in a crisis, and the way I handled my team, and they ended up asking if I'd thought about going into management. That led me to going for my MBA. I know I wouldn't have gone back to school before I started taking anti-depressants. I'm doing a lot of things I never would have considered before then. I think the whole thing made me braver about putting myself out there and doing things I was afraid to do, like taking voice lessons.

"What if it turns out I'm kidding myself when I think I can sing, and I really suck." "What if my scrapbook pages are mediocre and I'm being a big ass when I think I'm an artist?" We've all got the Impostor Police lurking around the corners in the back of our minds, whispering that the rest of the world's going to find out that we're big fat fakes. But you know what? We can sing, and we are artists, and we're good at our jobs and we deserve the compliments others give us.