I have friends who have said they don't want to go near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.

I didn't want to go. I needed to go.

I've become complacent. I've gotten a bit at ease with my day-to-day life, worrying only about the day's temperature, who will win "Dancing With the Stars" and whether I should plant spring bulbs.

That's fine, and normal, but it was time for a trip to New York.

My three days were spent primarily in Battery Park City, which didn't exist in 1951, the year of my very first trip to New York, as well as my first trip on an airplane.

It's where the World Trade Center once stood. It's where I needed to be.

This doesn't come as news to those of you who have made it to Ground Zero long before this, but seeing it rather than hearing about it, is very different.

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I did what tourists do. I went to the World Financial Center, redone after near ruin from the 9/11 attack, climbed the dozens of marble steps to the windows which are directly across from where the World Trade Center was.

Ironically a plane appeared in the sky, and I shuddered and was relieved as it disappeared into the clouds.

There was a large tour group in front of me, and I could hear a man explaining what is going on there now -- construction trucks, cranes, scaffolding -- but still a hole in the ground. I can't stop staring at it.

Taking pictures seems irreverent and yet that's what everyone is doing. I held my camera against my chest, not being comfortable snapping a picture, but then I did.

As an insightful article in the New York Post noted recently: "The new buildings, memorial and planned terminal might not be the ideal ones, but they'll be far better than an empty hole, and better than the banal Twin Towers and the often lifeless plaza that sprawled at their feet."

The area is lifeless no longer.

According to the article, too many New Yorkers never go there, believing it to be a war zone or that construction and street repairs have made the place a mess.

Well, it is true that much of the area is dug up or blocked but also as noted in the Post, "nowhere in the five boroughs, maybe not in the nation, is there a place where energy and optimism so tangibly fill the air."

And that is my surprise as well.

While I felt somewhat numb as I realized what had once been the World Trade Center, it's still a hole in the ground, and I nostalgically posed for a picture in the same spot I had stood six years ago -- now with just sky behind me, not the South and North Towers. I was aware of an unexpected vitality, a hopefulness.

On this October day more like summer than autumn, with bikers, runners, walkers, inline skaters, sunbathers, baby carriages and every conceivable breed of dog, Battery Park hums with life.

I didn't expect to be uplifted.

The population of the area has doubled to almost 45,000 since 2001. Condominiums are shooting up everywhere. There are now more parks and gardens along the waterfront. The yacht basin is full, and you can sit and stare at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. While always aware I was in the midst of a horror we can never forget, I am sitting on a bench, smiling at all the children I am seeing, many born since that fateful day and the many pregnant women who are strolling with a toddler, a fluffy little dog on a leash trailing behind them.

Also at a temporary memorial site in Battery Park is the Sphere, a magnificent Fritz Koenig metallic sculpture that once stood between the WTC towers. It was pulled from its sink-hole after the attack, bent and punctured but amazingly whole.

It was found with an airliner seat, a Bible and papers from WTC offices within.

It's a reminder of resilience and a reality we should cling to.