Nothing matters as a child. All that matters is the sand between your toes as you run on the beach and try to collect seashells and sand crabs. All that mattered (at least, for me) were the sand castles I built all by myself and all that effort I put into bringing those buckets full of water to make the sand, my sand, firm and compact.

I was an architect and a builder by the age of four—an expert in the art of monumental sand castles, which I warily decorated with seashells and rocks. I was an artist. My mother would read magazines right beside me, occasionally looking over her shoulder to check if I was still there, and alive. I wouldn’t know what time it was, or what time it would be when we left. I wouldn’t know anything, really. I don’t remember what I knew back then.

My mom would always praise my academic abilities. For a preschooler I was remarkable: I could read and write by the age of four. I could draw trees with green and yellow leave and little houses with red roofs and smoking chimneys. I drew puffy clouds and little girls with flowers and birds that looked like stretched out Vs. I could never keep a white sheet of paper. My crayons would devour it insatiably. My mom would frame all of those drawings, pretending that I was a child prodigy, that I had a phenomenal talent. And with all that art living within me, and that passion for creating … I still lacked just one ability: I couldn’t read the clock.

I went to kindergarden to broaden my horizons. I knew it was essential for me to learn how to read the clock, but I tried my best to avoid it. My attempts were unsuccessful. My mother was set on my learning—she spent hours trying to teach me. My teachers, too, spent weeks on the subject. Every other kid, slowly but surely, learned how to read the clock. I was stuck in time … unmoving, unknowing. Alone.

“Why learn time?” I asked my five-year-old self, “If it never stands still, why would I try to frame it in a sentence?” I pondered. “Is it ever really five o’clock? Wouldn’t it be five-fifteen with three seconds? Not even that.” Time slithers between your fingers, runs away from you like Alice’s rabbit. “Why try to learn how to read a face that has two restless hands? If it never stops, because the seconds keep hurrying away, could I ever really know what time it is?” Of course I can see a clock, a digital one, and read the numbers. I can see it says 5:15 PM. But then there’s the other one, the one that has that look: an intimidating face. He closes his eyes so we think he can’t see us. I know he can see me, he knows I’m there. I don’t want to read a face like that. No child wants to look at a face like that.

“It looks like a moustache,” explained my mother, “when it’s 3:40 PM or when it’s 8:20 PM.” She used tricks like that so that I would learn to read the clock. I only remember that one. It made me realize that time, the face, is a ghost that follows us. Time is a man that walks right behind you so you don’t see him, but you always know he’s there. “No quiero, Mami,” I would say. “I don’t want to.” I would plead her to stop trying to teach me. I would beg for some pity, my head couldn’t take it, I was afraid. But it was inevitable.

The test day came along. I was only five years old. But nothing matters as a child, right? Wrong! My palms were sweaty, and I was shaking. My stomach was in a bundle, and I knew I was about to fail. I was a disappointment, a letdown. My whole life felt like a fiasco. I would dishonor my family and my mother would make me drop my last name. I was no longer Sofi, “la nena de Mami.” I was now the dumb kid who never learned time.

Inevitably, I failed the test that day. I came home crying, hugged my mommy and asked her to please keep loving me. To my surprise, she hugged me back. She didn’t kick me out of the house or punish me. Instead, she made me my favorite meal, rice and beans, and we ate it together. I was happy that she didn’t hate me and that she didn’t loathe the fact that time was not on my side. Then again, I was only a child. I think I still am. Time was not on my side, and it still isn’t. I still can’t read that face, and it still scares me to try.