NEW YORK -- As I stood a few blocks from what's come to be known as Ground Zero at the World Trade Center on Thursday, I had to stare at the little league soccer field where my son was supposed to play today.

The bombing has rightly been portrayed as a symbolic attack on America. But in all the words and images, it's been easy to miss the fact that a tight-knit community thrived in the shadow of the Trade Center. The neighborhood where I spent a decade before moving away last winter, Tribeca, was growing fast, with new apartment buildings being added every year. But parents who lived there fought to keep the soccer fields in the midst of all this upward expansion, and were rightfully proud to have succeeded. Last weekend, Downtown Little League played its first games of the season. The kids took the Twin Towers for granted. For them, the buildings were just a gateway to a normal neighborhood.

Everything about the attack and its aftermath was wrought on a huge scale. In a scene right out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film, an army of unionists, many dressed in overalls and work boots, slung shovels over their shoulders and disappeared into a cloud of smoke chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" Nearby, a mass-transit bus full of pickaxes and other tools sped down the West Side Highway under police escort. Every few minutes, a crowd of people would run, warned about a possible gas leak or other risk.

I walked past checkpoints to my old corner, which now was cordoned off by yellow police tape and national guardsmen with gas masks. A woman said hi to me from behind a medical mask. It took up so much of her small face that I couldn't recognize her. As it turned out, she had been my neighbor. She has a five-year-old daughter and a newborn boy and was waiting to find out if she could get into her apartment -- which had been evacuated -- to recover some personal items. She couldn't because a skyscraper across the way, at 101 Barclay Street, was said to be on the verge of collapse.

If it goes down, it will fall on the tiny red-brick school next door.

The soccer fields that my son plays on are across the street. The grass was coated with dust and filled with debris. Rescue workers were clearing them so they could be used as a triage center or, more likely, as a staging area for body bags.

I know a lot of parents who are getting out of town, rather than let their kids see that -- along with soldiers on their streets, burned-out cars on their blocks, craters in their sidewalks, and collapsed buildings on their school route. So this Saturday, there's not going to be any soccer.

It's just a small detail. But it's one that helps me begin to understand the shape of the new world that my son will be growing up in.

Shaun Assael is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at shaun.assael@espnmag.com.