It was shortly after 8 a.m. and I walked into work. Thinking to myself "Everyone is just standing around the trade floor watching tv, goofing off". Thinking to myself "Oh great, I won't be leaving at 4 dot, because they've all seen me walk in shortly after 8".
That's not why they were standing there. There were serious faces and the words "World Trade Centre", "crumbling down", "terrorists", "why?" flashed in and out of my ears.
I sat down at my desk after what seemed like an hour. Turned on my computer monitors and tuned into the tv on the monitors. A gaggle gathered around behind me and told me "CNN, no CBC, no CNN!". The second tower came down. What is going on? What kind of world is this? I just walked into work a few minutes later than I planned and now this?
All we could wonder from our safe desks in Manitoba was "What next?". Is this the Apocalypse?
And then Washington. Who was doing this to the Americans? What struck a chord the most with me was the reading from a psychic that I had in April 2001. She told me that someone hated the Americans and I sympathized with them. I understood how they felt. But this couldn't be the incident to understand. Seriously, this is hate. I've never hated anyone to wish this on them.
I looked over at my colleagues' faces. There was fear, sorrow and disgust. Now, the worry came. Two of our colleagues were there. In NYC that week. As this was a notorious week for financial conferences. They were not at the WTC but at lower-lying Merrill Lynch buildings. How would we get them home from an otherwise safe country? Both fellows were Canadian, but one was visibly going to cause alarm when coming across the border. Our world had become instantly paranoid and we were a part of that paranoia. From the connections of another colleague, he arranged safe travels by car to get them home safely to their families. It was clearly the scariest moment for all of us and the reality check. The wake up call. This was entirely happening.
In discussing the sequence of events, everyone had stories; friends had moved out of NYC in the past 3 months; colleagues went to conferences in the WTC every year for the past 15 years and this was the first year they didn't attend; emails came from our Canadian comrades who were stuck on the 80-something floor of Tower 2 and watched the first tower fall and then they died after the email; colleagues who worked at the WTC during the bombing years prior. The entire world shook and after all, the terrorists got what they wanted: terror.
No work was done for days. We were the most unproductive in our lives. We worried at night to what we would wake up to in the morning. I swore that I would never bring a child into this world (3 years later, I forgot that quote). We've recovered, but the world has changed forever.
signed, the willow
