Why does one fragment of time persist, obstinately clinging to the surface, while another annihilates itself with the wink of an eye? I don’t know. I only know that there’s one memory that has stuffed itself into the fissures of my brain. Perhaps it has to do with the overwhelming impurity that I felt as I began being a teenager. As my body began to change, I was humiliated. I felt repulsed by the woman I was morphing into. I cannot explain why I recoiled from the idea of becoming older but I did, fearing that the passage of time would make me sinful.

In the memory, there was a carpet, as beige and unchanging as the desert, beneath my feet. The air-conditioning breathed down my neck and my hand was in my mother’s nutshell-like grasp. I was sitting on the sofa, my legs dangling like a pendulum, back and forth, hair in curls and a doll sitting loyally by my side. I waited obediently as my mom talked to her friend. I was absorbed in the perfect world of my imagination. I hadn’t known that my mother’s friend had a teenager daughter until she came in. She was tall—or was that just my six-year old perspective?—and had pierced lips, pin-straight hair, and curled lashes that left me in awe. She entered with her arms crossed in front of her chest, phone peeking out from her pocket. Her mother stopped talking to my mother and turned towards her daughter’s irritated glare. In an authoritative, motherly way, she tilted her head towards the window. In response, drops of rain slammed themselves against the glass.

“I hope,” her mother said cautiously; “that you don’t plan on going swimming in the rain.”

“No,” she snarled; “Lucky you. Yippee. You can go and celebrate now.”

The girl rolled her eyes and disappeared into her room once again. I was dumbfounded. That patronising tone of voice and rebellious air made me cringe, for I knew my mom would never tolerate it, and also admiring. When I’m a teenager, was what went through my little mind.

“It’s hard,” the teenager’s mother sighed, turning back to us guests; “it really is. To try and create an infinite shield around your daughter, making sure there’s not a speck of dust on her fragile skin and that nobody hurts her—herself included. I spent every moment of my life making sure that nobody would scare her into thinking that the world was anything other than perfect. And what now? She doesn’t fit in my arms anymore. I can’t hold her back.”

She looked into my eyes and then through them, as if trying to see beyond the child I was at that moment. I felt my mother squeeze my hand but continued weaving, or rather tangling, the doll’s hair. The lady’s voice grew soft and airy.

“She’s made of crystal, Samantha. And I know you make sure that not one greasy fingertip leaves a mark on her. I know you run behind her just to rub away the stains before they seep through. It’s tiring, isn’t it? But I’m not saying don’t try to protect her. That’s impossible! I’m saying that you should know that as long as she walks on this earth, there will be rocks ready to prick her feet. And there’ll be foul smells, bitter tastes, and God knows how much more. Oh, they’re each a crystal ball to us Sam. But we can’t put them on a shelf. You can’t prevent or clean every stain.”

Samantha and her friend became taciturn. Samantha looked at the tiny girl I was with an expression of preoccupation, fear, and excruciating tenderness. Blissfully absorbed in my toy, I thought nothing of my mother’s tears.

I guess as my adolescence approached I felt like a stained crystal ball, in shatters. But though glass cuts and change hurts, I now know that growing means shedding and breaking through that bubble of innocence my mother treasured so much.

I miss being a child. But I wouldn’t be able to if I had not stopped being one.