The Towers

I've been living in New York City for two months, but it wasn't until last weekend that I finally made the necessary pilgrimage to Ground Zero. I had not been to the site since August 2001, on a family trip to the city. It is a visit that I put off, but I needed to do.

It was confusing at first. I got off the subway and followed the swarms in the direction of the PATH station and "WTC" signs. I followed the crowds onto a tunnel-like pedestrian bridge that crossed above the site of the Towers. Tourists and cameras lined the walkway, peeking through the grates on the walls to try to get a view of the site below. Just seemed like a lot of cranes and dirt. There were a lot of families present with young children; I remember wondering how these children, who were born after the Towers ceased to exist, would find any meaning in the place that just seemed to be a construction site. I kept walking.

On the other side of the walkway, I saw the water and was determined to keep going. It was coming back quickly now--the dock, the playground, the restaurant. As I got closer, I saw Lady Liberty at last--my first clear view since arriving in this City. I saw Ellis Island. And I saw, as distinct as ever, the white Colgate clock on the opposite shore in Jersey City. For years, we parked our car in the lot beside that clock and caught the ferry across the Hudson, docking each time right below the WTC. The water and park were just as I remembered them. A large stone pathway for runners, a playground a bit farther north (I remembered playing there once after seeing Annie), lots of trees and space. The yacht harbor was even still there, as full as it had been at my last visit.

Turning, the World Financial Center, which I will always think of as the glass Marriott, looked as if nothing had changed--glass and steel, perfectly reconstructed. But there was a severe absence. It was not the construction site that hit me--that is what remains. It was the open space, the absence of two looming towers flanking the small glass building. I could almost see them as I looked up, their space carved out perfectly by the buildings around them, like the empty holes of a puzzle missing two crucial pieces. I had to look away.

Though the outside was deceptively the same, the inside of the glass Center was painfully different. The palm trees are there. The sweeping central staircase is in its rightful place. The glass and steel ceiling is as grand as ever. But the restaurant is gone. I remember sitting at that restaurant after a Broadway matinee, playing with my unwanted water by adding sugar packets and wetting straw wrappers. I don't remember what it was called or what I ate, but I distinctly remember entering the main front doors of the glass center and the restaurant being on our right. Its strange the details that the mind stashes away, the unusual bits of memory that remain vividly alive. It was semi-fancy, and I was being uncooperative that day. We sat at tables just outside the restaurant in the central plaza. There are some tables still there and benches below the palm trees. But the restaurant is gone. The space that once held it has been reconstructed.

The Financial Center which used to connect to the Towers now has large glass windows on its back through which visitors can solemnly view the abyss. There's not much to see. Surrounded by families and whining toddlers, yawning teens, and tourists wearing headsets to tell them about the site, it can be a discouraging visit. The World Financial Center feels like a shopping mall and visitors center; it is eerie to not see the suited men and business women rushing through, grabbing a coffee, and running off to their next meeting. At least Merril Lynch and Deloitte are still there. Maybe cynicism got the best of me; it was a weekend, after all, so naturally it would be devoid of workers and full of tourists. But regardless, I couldn't join the masses by the window; I had to retreat to a forgotten corner of the building and sit and think.

This entire entry has been transcribed from the post-it notes that I scribbled it on while sitting there.