The Life That Rose From the Ashes of Ground Zero

Three days before 9/11, I hosted an out-of-town friend who wanted to take in the view of New York from above. I suggested a drink at Windows on the World, in the north tower of the World Trade Center. We arrived a minute too late to catch the last elevator to the 107th floor.

“Next time,” I remember telling her. Of course there wouldn’t be one.

Many years of living in a city creates a kind of archaeology of private memory. A street corner, a bar, an office building, a playground, a spot where a favorite restaurant or bookshop used to be — each recalls a buried layer of life, and each has its own circumstances, its web of relationships, its emotional color.

In 1998 I got a job with The Wall Street Journal, which at the time had its offices across the street from the Trade Center. My subway stop was at........

© The New York Times