Six years have passed since Loma Prieta shrugged her shoulders. I'm in my third year of college. I started out studying geology, but I've changed my major to architecture. I've also taken classes in zoology and animal behavior, and in each class I've asked the professor how animals can sense when an earthquake is about to happen. Some of them deny that the animals can sense anything - they say that it was just a coincidence, for example, that Lara whined and ran out of the house as she did. Others say they believe that the animals sense something, but they don't know what. I wrote a paper on the subject - but the fact is, we still don't know the answer. I've taken classes in geology, and I could now describe to you exactly how the Pacific tectonic plate slipped two meters northwest and one meter upward past the North American plate along the San Andreas Fault, eighteen kilometers beneath the surface of Mount Loma Prieta, generating powerful P waves (primary waves) and slower S waves (secondary waves) measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale. I could tell you how most of the damage was done to houses built on soft soil, and I could show you a few simple building techniques that make a house much better able to handle the shaking of a quake. But with all this knowledge, when I think back to six years ago, it is no less frightening.

My parents still live on Loma Prieta, and I still go back to visit them on vacations. The old part of the house had to be torn down. It took months - and a cold, rainy winter camping out in the shell of the new house - before the county approved plans to redesign and finish the new section. We taped clear plastic sheets over the window openings and hung tarps for doors. The raccoons would sneak inside at night and steal food until finally Lara got mad at them for stealing her dog kibble, and from then on she would chase them away - if she woke up. We had one smelly kerosene heater to fight against the drafts. We slept in sleeping bags. We cooked on the camp stove. We wore heavy jackets indoors all day. Sidney would not allow anyone to leave him by himself for even a minute. If I went outside, he followed. If I went to the bathroom in our rented PortaPotti, he waited right by the door. He often slept at my side.

Our schools stayed closed for two weeks. Sidney's elementary school was destroyed. When my school reopened, the elementary students had to join us in double sessions. At first, the school had no water or heat. A big stainless steel tanker truck brought water to the school and stationed itself in the parking lot. People came from all around to fill plastic jugs as if it was a community well in an ancient village. Some of the class buildings we used were six inches further apart than they were before the quake. There were cracks in the floors. Windows wouldn't open; doors wouldn't close. The Red Cross ran a shelter for the couple hundred people who'd lost their houses. They lived in the multipurpose room until Christmas, so we couldn't even use the gymnasium.

Margarita gave birth to a healthy, beautiful boy. She was afraid to go to the hospital, so my mother arranged for a midwife to come to our house. The baby was born in what is now our living room while rain slapped at our plastic sheeted windows, and the midwife worked by the light of a Coleman lantern while I acted as translator. I witnessed the birth - and love little Pablo as if he were my own.

My father and Jorge - mostly Jorge - finished the new part of the house and tore down the old. It's smaller than we had planned, plus there's less space because Jorge and Margarita are living there, too - and little Pablo, who now is almost six. My parents arranged for them to stay legally in this country, so they don't have to hide anymore. Jorge works for a construction company. Margarita cooks and keeps house, which allows my mother to hold a full time job to help pay for the earthquake damage. It isn't what we planned - a smaller house, a bigger family - but we still have our redwoods and our views.

It took a year for Sidney to stop following me around and to get to where he could sleep by himself - that is, by himself with Squawk, who returned from the hospital after a week with Mr. Vanda. Even three years later, Sidney would sometimes wake up and come padding to my bed - not my mother's. One day, at last, I heard Sidney singing - not to me but to little Pablo - a song he'd learned from Margarita: "La Cucaracha." Now every day Sidney walks Pablo to the new elementary school, which is side by side with Sid's middle school. I'd like to say that Sid is less of a brat - and maybe he is, somewhat - but mostly he's just older. He's a skate-boardin' dude. He'll hitch rides to the top of the hill, then skateboard back down. That's how you do it in the mountains.

Mr. Perkins is still teaching. Mrs. LaFeau retired. After four years in temporary buildings, a new elementary school was finally built - with all the new safety features that I'm learning about in my classes.

Jennie is a pre-med student at Berkeley. We keep in touch. She's going with a guy who plays classical violin. She says they're like totally in love.

Mr. Vanda is living in a trailer where his house used to be. He still has chickens. He has to walk with a cane - but he walks. The Winnebago people sold their house without ever coming back. The man who was searching never found his wedding ring, but he built a new cabin. The stonemason who fell on the little girl suffered brain damage from the concussion. Now he wanders up and down Summit Road staring at passing cars day after day. Sudden noises make him panic and flee. Sometimes he stands in front of the grocery store, and people give him money though he never asks.

I live in a dorm - a well-built, reinforced structure.

Sitting in a padded chair under fluorescent lights four hundred miles from home, I still sometimes think I feel a slight quiver, hear a creaking of roof against wall. I stiffen. My eyes get wide. I turn to my neighbor, whoever it may be, and I say:

"Did you feel that?"

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