A couple photos of Najma, taken in the apartment we were living in on 9/11/2001, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The bottom shows the phone (a landline, remember those!) on which I tried in vain all throughout that day to call relatives and coworkers letting them know I was okay. Both landlines and cell towers were awack for a while. Fortunately we had the internet and I ended up communicating with people by email. One of my most solid memories from that day is an email from my boss letting us know everyone in my office – two blocks from the World Trade Center – was accounted for and okay.
I was walking to the PATH station to take the train across the Hudson River into the WTC when the first plane hit. I watched everything from across the water before walking back home, in a daze. In addition to getting that email from my office, my other strongest memories of that day are waiting in my apartment building to hear all of my neighbors return home – thankfully they all did, and Najma continually sitting in the front window, ears perked up, looking in the direction of the WTC. She clearly knew something was up. But she was a cat, so of course.
Anyway, over the last twenty years I’ve written about that day so many times, I thought this year I’d reflect more on who I was twenty years ago than where I was. The pandemic has made me reflect repeatedly over the past year and a half, so it seems natural on this anniversary.
Twenty years ago today I was a newish lawyer working my second real law job, as an appellate public defender in lower Manhattan. I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey with a Russian blue mix I’d adopted from the ASPCA, whom I named Najma, after a fellow law school student. I was two years into the job and beginning to fit into it. I loved researching and writing briefs, hated oral arguments in court. I still loved books, primarily fiction, and as busy as the job was I still entertained dreams of a writing career. I remember that night the Brown University Alumni Club (I’d gotten my masters at that school), which I’d recently joined, was to have its inaugural meeting. Of course it ended up being postponed. But I would go on to befriend several people in that group who worked in publishing. Some of them tried to convince me to go into a publishing career, which, after much deliberation, I decided I couldn’t afford to do with my student loan debt and my desire to live without a roommate. That remains my greatest regret. My only real regret, actually. But I don’t want to harp on that.
Four months after that day I decided life was too short and I needed to start on that writing career, no matter how busy it would make me. I began classes at Gotham Writers Workshop in the Village, and started my first novel. I later got an agent and had my first, and likely only, experience with traditional publishing. I ended up indie publishing it and it won several awards. I left the public defender job about seven years later, and with it, the legal profession. I embarked on a writing career, penning articles for online magazines and eventually a blog that become popular in the dance world, before publishing six more novels. I now have a seventh on the way, whose main character is actually Najma, the Russian blue cat I lived with all those years ago. Though she passed away in 2005 of a congenital heart condition, she’s never really left my life.
It’s funny thinking what my 9/11/2001 self would have thought of what her life became 20 years later. She’d be shocked, that’s for sure. She would never have thought she’d return to the desert, live outside of a big city, buy a house, and have, instead of cats, dogs, one of which is a Belgian malinois / German shepherd mix! A large dog who kind of looks like a coyote? Never! She never would have thought she’d publish romance novels set in the world of ballroom dancing. She was so into “literary fiction.” And she’d never danced anything but ballet as a child! But would she be surprised to be writing a novel in which Najma is one of the two main characters, about a woman her age who’s left the law to begin a cat cafe? Probably not so much, although she’d be sad to know Najma is no longer physically with her. And she wouldn’t have known what a cat cafe was 🙂
She definitely could have imagined she’d become an animal advocate, since one of her favorite classes in law school was animal rights law, and she’d always loved animals. She easily could have imagined she’d write fiction about animals.
Hey, maybe I’ve actually come full circle, writing a series involving animal characters and using some of my criminal procedure background.
Anyway, enough navel gazing. If you’ve stuck with me this far, thank you! It’s good to reflect sometimes on who you once were and where you’ve come in order to chart a course for what’s ahead. On this most solemn of days, I wish you peaceful thoughts and happy continuing progress on life’s journey. I wish you all the excitement for life and hopefulness for the future that I felt at that stage of my life, and that, yes, despite the pandemic and the threat of climate change, I can’t help but still feel today.
