HOW DID 9.11 CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

9.11 certainly changed mine...

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was a bright, clear, brisk, and beautiful morning in the Northeast. I remember thinking I was so happy to get back to work after having been on maternity leave for three months. My then-husband had decided when he learned we were going to have a child that he needed to move out to “find himself” and would return when he could be a “better husband and father.” Little did I know he was not being a “good husband” for the last year of our three-year marriage, (and nine-year relationship). Needless to say, he never returned.

Although I gave birth alone (with the help of a doula) in the hospital, James and I made it and when we returned home, we had lots of support from friends and family I still have in New England. That said, when James was four months, my mother flew in from Louisiana and stayed with James while I returned to work. It was only my seventh day back at work when...

Well before 8:46 a.m. ET when the first hijacked aircraft was flown into the World Trade Centers, I drove into work from the South Shore on Route 3 heading North into Boston, when the first plane hit. I was thinking about what a beautiful day it was - morning temperatures in the 60s, not a cloud in the sky. I was so happy to get my groove back. To get my life back. To be back in the driver’s seat – not just of my zippy little black BMW 330ci (that I bought, in my name, with my own money I worked so hard to earn, on my own), but the driver’s seat of my life, my career...after all, I had to raise this young man – on my own. This was to be no small task. I had made a promise to him in the hospital. I committed to keeping him happy, healthy, safe, and strong as long as I was alive and able. My career was the only way that was going to happen. I could not wait to get back on track. It was one of those rare days when drove with my sunroof open and the radio a little too loud to be polite.

Then, of course, the lasting memory for me, and most other people, is not of the blue sky, but the interruption on the radio of the announcement of the first plane hitting the first tower. I was shocked but still thinking it had been an accident. My day took an abrupt turn when the second plane hit the South Tower. Shortly after 9:00 a.m. ET, when I arrived at work, it was quickly becoming apparent that this was a terrorist attack. I rushed upstairs to the second floor of State Street Bank (the world’s largest custodian) and then to the trade floor to see all the televisions show the second tower get hit, again and again, and again. We knew then it was terrorist activity. We saw nothing but plumes of fire and the gray-black sky over NYC and Washington DC after the planes hit their intended targets.

As more and more information came in people burst into rage and tears and cries of desperation as we learned family and friends were on the American Airlines flight 11 Boeing 767 plane that flew out of Boston’s Logan Airport, and in the World Trade Center Towers. Many were attending the Risk Waters Financial Seminar. In fact, the head of global marketing for State Street Bank (also known as State Street Corporation) had been in a taxi headed to Logan Airport when the plane struck the first tower and the taxi driver turned around and told her he was bringing her back to State Street, and why. She was shocked, stunned, dumbfounded. The conference was a two-day conference and she had decided to attend only the second day of the conference at the last minute. Her original plan would have put her in death’s path. An additional 137 people who had been invited had not yet arrived.

Someone very close to me there lost his brother-in-law; a woman who worked there lost her friend who was a flight attendant on the fateful American Airlines flight 11; we lost clients who were traders. Many in that great city, as you might imagine work in financial services – nearly everyone in the towers worked in that small, tight, industry that has suffered so many blows since. No doubt it too as a whole has been guilty of quite a few blows to our nation (financial crisis of 2008, for no small example). The good people of State Street were not among those wrong doers. In fact, they were forced to lay off 7,000 or their 70,000 global employees because of the few greedy fools and their money.

What immediately followed were the phone calls. The trade floor was a buzz with men (not all men but yes, mostly men) calling their wives and children to say they had to stay on the trade floor to do their jobs and just to talk, to say “I love you,” to babble in bewilderment over what was happening in our great country. The National Guard was called in and the city was under lock and key. All flights had been halted and we were escorted out of the building, instructed to go home immediately. Of course the traders remained at their desks and the phones rang off the hook, the computers were smoking, and the world economy was hanging by a thread. The world’s most powerful country had been brought to its knees. Grown men and women – powerful people who control more than you and I would realize upon first blush – were in a state of dissociative fugue.

People continued to get calls, place calls, hear angry cries, sad cries, desperate cries, as they learned of more bad news. It was estimated over 200 people jumped to their deaths. There were 1360 fatalities in the North Tower. No one survived.

I drove home. No sunroof. No loud radio. No hope. No knowledge. Not knowing if I could keep my commitment to this four-month-old boy to keep him happy, healthy, safe, and strong. I just did not know. I truly knew nothing. I was alone. I was empty. His father abandoned him. My father had died. From that point forward my life was never to be the same – and not just because of the horrific tragedy of 9/11.

On 9/12, it was “her” birthday. She was legal -- thus, my marriage was over.

Six months later after trying to make my life work as mother, father, sole provider, nurturer, business woman, home owner, descent global citizen, I let go. I could no longer do it alone. My mother encouraged me to sell my home in New England, move to Baton Rouge where she would put me through law school and help me raise my son, and I could write a new chapter in my life.

Skipping a few harrowing chapters where the “dumbsel” in the story believes her tragic hero of a man as he convinces her he is the victim of a stalking teenage crusher, I will say, I sold my house within two days of its being on the market. I sold everything in it after learning more about how na?ve I had been and for how long.

I traded my zippy BMW in for a wagon, loaded it with three priceless oil paintings my father left me, enough clothes for a three-day drive, my sheltie, “Duffy” (who has since died of Cancer), a rainbow vacuum cleaner (because those things were too expensive to replace), and my infant child. We drove the coast to Roanoke, VA and then on to Baton Rouge staying at Holiday Inns because they take pets. I remember the tears flowing uncontrollably as I looked in the rearview mirror because everything I ever dreamed of, longed for, and thought I needed and wanted was fading away as I drove off. Everything I ever thought I would want to give my son was no longer mine to give. Everything I knew my father would be so proud of me for was no longer mine. I was a Vice President. I made six figures. I built that house. That house was in my name. I bought that car. That car was in my name. I bought that boat. That boat was in my name. That land? Mine. No man took care of me. No man. I took care of me – and now, my son.

Well, I learned that I am not that job title. I am not that house. I am not that car. I am not boat. I am not that land. I am no man’s “wife”/”daughter”/”mother.” I am who I am – just me.

Long story, less long, I moved to Baton Rouge with my son when he was 15 months old and we lived with my mother for two weeks only to learn her words were just that -- and her intentions though, well meaning, were just that. After two weeks in her then beautiful home on LSU Avenue in College Town in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I quickly realized the reality of her life – and mine. I used the little bit of money I had left from the sale of my home in New England to pay a full year’s rent in an apartment on Perkins Road in a gated community called, Mansions in the Park. There were very nice people there, but one would swear those gates were put up by the people on the outside, to keep all the newly divorced “crazies” on the inside. For almost two years, James and I lived there until I decided he needed a yard in which to play. At that point, I purchased a small cottage across the street from a church and school. I started over in a job that was not meant for me in the long term but I met some beautiful humans I hope to remain connected with forever and I learned some valuable and humbling lessons while there. It was in a coffee shop in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where I met my soulmate, my best friend, my husband, and James' REAL father. Michael fell in love with James and me (in that order), asked for my hand in marriage, and then adopted this beautiful boy whose name I had legally changed to Freeman before Mike came. along. Now, he is James Futrell...as he was born to be. It's even on his birth certificate, as Michael is his dad.

I’ll say 9/11 and then the very next day, 9/12, changed my life personally in a deep and significant way. I’ll not ever have the life I once had in Boston, Massachusetts. I cannot in honesty say I don't wish for that. That would be a lie. I wish for that often. However, I have no regrets. God bless those men and women who lost loved ones in the tragedy of 9/11.

God bless those who still fight to make things “right,” whatever that means.