Where were you on that horrific day in history? What were you doing? For me,it started as a regular day, like everybody Else's'. It should have been a momentous day for me. I closed escrow on this house on that same day. I should have been celebrating but instead it was a sad, solemn and anxious day.
It started at 6 am, the usual time for me to wake up. I was staying at my brother's house after having sold my house in Anaheim, I moved in with my brother till I find another house. I didn't want 2 real estate transactions going on at the same time. The house was sold, I got the money and I was at that time closing on my current house. There were 2 other transactions dependent on the timely closing of my transaction. It must have been a trying time for them too. The escrow company sent a roving notary to my work the night before, so I had already signed the escrow papers, all that was left to do on 9-11 was to go to my bank and do a wire transfer of the down payment to the escrow company. Then the whole package was going by Fedex to the Bank of America in Portland, Oregon, who will then fund my loan. The seller will get his money to buy his house (already in escrow), his seller is also waiting for his funds.... Guess what, the tragedy of 9-11 happened and threatened every body's best laid plans! All planes were grounded. At the outset it doesn't look like any of the 3 real estate transactions were going anywhere. With a very heavy heart, I was still able to go the bank to wire the money. I learnt later that Bank of America accepted the faxed copies of the paperwork from the escrow company and they funded my loan on 9-11 as scheduled. So while it was a happy ending for us, it wasn't so for the families of the 3,000 who perished in those attacks.
I was reading my bible at 6 am, a customary thing for me. The phone rang, it was my other brother who lives in Toronto. In his excited voice (he 's an emotional person, easily excitable) said, 'turn on the TV!'. All I could think of was, what is it this time? I did turn on the TV and saw the replay of a plane going into the first tower, my first reaction was, is he drunk at so early in the morning then the second plane hit and my world crashed that day. On the way to work, the traffic was worse than usual, the whole of downtown Los Angeles was closed, which was where I was heading to. It took my twice as long to get there and upon reaching my store was closed so I turned around and went back to my brother's place.
The news grew exceedingly dark with each passing moment as more was known about the attacks. We called each member of the family to see where they were and that they were OK. We couldn't reach Dawn (my sister) or her husband, Paul, they both work in New York city. So it was an anxious day for us, on top of the morass of what had happened. It was very late before we reached Paul. It took him 5 hours to get home to New Jersey, the Holland tunnel was closed and he waited hours for his turn on the ferry. He said, Dawn was at a conference in North Carolina. Thank God.
In a few weeks, I will celebrate the 6Th anniversary of being in this house. As usual that day will be tempered by the remembrance of that tragic and horrific day of terror.
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