Recently, I have begun to understand white people a little better.

I am a California Puerto Rican, born in Los Angeles and grew up in the Oakland Bay Area. Earthquake country. The recent quakes in Puerto Rico are a tectonic collision of my history: my grandmother’s homeland and the trembling coast she fled to.

My father is African American and West Indian. All my people were stivers, coming up from the South to the North, or the Caribbean to the US, to escape hard times. I married an upwardly mobile Jamaican immigrant. He works in tech.

My kid has a pet hamster. When I was a kid, black children didn’t have pet hamsters. Black people didn’t have rodents or even cats. Black families sometimes had dogs. To keep them safe. Any animal had to earn its keep.

But we are upwardly mobile, and my kid wanted a hamster, so we got one. Because I believe we deserve joy. The kid finds joy in hamsters. I find joy in writing.

One recent morning, I was doing what writer moms do: multitasking. But in an upwardly mobile way: walking at my treadmill desk. Writing about the earthquakes that are devastating the people of Puerto Rico—causing anxiety, heartbreak, rage. A spike in the suicide rate. But as I was writing, I couldn’t feel anything. Which is understandable, after two hurricanes, thousands of quakes, and an ongoing state of emergency.

But working moms don’t have time to feel. Working moms keep it moving. The upwardly mobile mom manages to write and exercise and socialize. Our family had plans that morning. Duties. Obligations. Our family had agreed to bring the coffee for a morning walk with other upwardly mobile African American and Caribbean families. My man and I split up. He went to get the coffee. My job was to get the kid out the door. But the kid wouldn’t leave because the hamster was missing. So I sifted through the bedding on the bottom of the cage. Was it sleeping? Dead? How could it have gotten out? We looked everywhere. My kid and I didn’t make it to the walk. My man took the coffee. He sent our apologies. Our hamster was missing. It was an emergency.

And now I’m crying. Over this damn hamster. And I think I understand white people a little better. White people can let the president bomb Iran but get upset over a dog dying in a luggage compartment. Because I am upwardly mobile and most days, I think I’m going to be safe. I share the delusion of white people that these climate tragedies will not touch us directly. That my family is going to be safe. But nothing is safe. And nobody is going to be safe in the long run without a Green New Deal and maybe not even with one. And there’s no guarantee we can even elect candidates who will fight the climate emergency—even if the people want them—since our system is so damn corrupt. But we just have to keep fighting for justice and fighting the numbness. And why can’t I find this goddamn hamster? How did it get out? How do we all get out of this climate emergency?

As I walk through my house, everywhere I look, I am scanning for signs of life. Some furry gray sign that all will be well. Sifting through hamster bedding like my Puerto Rican people sift through rubble looking for loved ones. Will I be able to sleep tonight worrying about this hamster? My heart jumping with every rustle? Will the people of Puerto Rico be able to sleep tonight wondering if the next earthquake will send their house crashing onto them and their families?

I understand white people because it’s not about the goddamn hamster. It’s about my family, my Caribbean people, every species on this planet. And I don’t know if we are going to be safe, but I know we have to fight and that our numbness—my numbness and particularly white people’s numbness—is the enemy as much as anything else. Numbness keeps us confused and preoccupied with sifting through hamster bedding and scrolling through Instagram and pointing fingers at who’s not recycling and poking flashlights into dusty corners looking for lost pets. But the hamster will come out when we least expect it, when it is good and damn ready or not at all. Numbness blunts our ability to act—to respond to the real dangers and above all to step up to the real opportunitiesof this year, this election, this chance to fight for our lives.

My kid saw I was upset and said we should come up with crazy ideas of what had happened to the hamster. The kid said it had ended up in a parallel dimension where it had superpowers. I said maybe it was kidnapped by aliens and taken to another planet.

But there is no other planet to go to. And maybe I am not powerful enough by myself, but we can build a movement. And have a shot at saving our species from extinction and addressing racism and colonization in the process. And then I won’t need to be upwardly mobile and desperately trying to tie my family’s fate to white people, because it won’t be so freaking dangerous to be brown or working class. And good luck to our hamster, wherever you are. Time to cry these tears and to face this climate emergency, and find joy in the fight.