I was about to head to Manhattan from Park Slope, Brooklyn on the 2 train when I called my client in lower Manhattan to confirm our 9:30 a.m. meeting. I picked up my landline handset and called the office on Desbrosses St. (two blocks south of Canal) not long after the first plane hit, although I was completely unaware.

The second plane hadn’t hit yet. The man who answered the phone was frantic. There’s not going to be a meeting, he yelled into the phone. Haven’t you seen what’s happening here? He hung up the phone.

I didn’t have a TV at the time and my only sources for news were the NPR Realplayer channel and the Times. I turned on the radio and learned that the first tower had been struck.

A knock came at my door. It was my landlord. She and her husband lived in the floor above me in a Federal-period townhome. She asked me to come upstairs with her to watch NY1, the 24-hour news channel that was central to daily life in the city back then. She was extremely upset and I sat with her and consoled her. When she finally calmed down, I excused myself to go back to my apartment. All I could think about was calling my mother.

Wiping the sleep from her eyes, Judy picked up the phone around 7:30 a.m. her time.

Mom, something has happened in New York. You’re going to hear about it. But I’m okay. I just wanted you to know.

Thanks for letting me know, honey, she said and then hung up the phone. More than a day would pass before you could get through on the phone lines again.

We were all convinced that another attack was coming any moment. I don’t know that people understand that today. I stayed at home until the very end of the day. When I went up to 5th Ave. to see if any stores were open, the streets were empty. Suddenly, I noticed that singed pieces of paper were floating down on the street all around me. It felt like I was in a movie.

I didn’t return to the site of the tragedy until two decades later. I knew a lot of people who worked at Windows on the World because my band had a regular gig there. I had been spending a couple days a week at Desbrosses St., about a mile from the towers, and so I knew a lot of vendors and shopkeepers in lower Manhattan.

When I had to go downtown for work, I would avoid the site. But there was no ignoring the tide of “missing persons” notices that seamlessly covered the wrought-iron fence surrounding Trinity Church. To scan those faces was to share the grief of the missing’s loved ones.

Things were rough for me after 9/11. I had just launched my freelance career as a food and wine writer. All of a sudden, my nascent business ground to a halt. I ended up taking a job at a gallery on the Upper East Side. It was a huge setback for me and I almost left the city.

But I hung in there and things came back around for me. I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t get on that train. I would have arrived at the site just after the second plane hit.

G-d bless the families and memories of those who perished in the tragedy. G-d bless America.