New York Notebook

When the earth began to move, I was on lying on my bed with my cats in my lap. My son was in his room across the hall. The bed began to shake and I thought, inexplicably: is my little brother doing this? And then I thought, ‘Oh no, are we under attack again?’ (having 9/11 on the brain the way I and many other New Yorkers do). The cats lifted their heads at me looking for answers as the building swayed and the door to my bedroom opened and closed. When it was over, I called out to my son, asking if he’d felt anything, but he, an almost teenager, was oblivious. I went online to see the origins of the trembling I’d felt — the world is so nuts these days, was it al-Qa’eda, a bomb, my upstairs neighbours remodelling?

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My thoughts turned to my brother again. When we talked later that day, he said something about how we live by ignoring the threat of natural disasters, but I feel oddly grateful for them.