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I go and find a room lit by a television screen, and my mother sitting on the blue couch in her nightgown, knees close to her chest in the manner of children. Her back, she says, hurts, and so I take a tube of Bengay and circle the offending area with my hands, very carefully at first, then progressively harder. She does not swear at me for being too rough, a bad sign. She must be in quite some pain, perhaps more than she has been in for a long time.

It occurs to me that often I treat my mother like a baby, but she is not so very young, not anymore. She mentions that it might be the weight of her purse that’s causing her the pain, and I agree, a little too profusely perhaps, to avoid her coming to more dangerous explanations. That afternoon I’d had to spend a while convincing her that she didn’t have cancer, though there was no way I could be sure myself. But I can talk big if she is comforted, it is never a one-way cycle, after all. The oxygen I dedicate to her is always returned to me, when I am scared and require all the usual consolations: that I am strong enough, kind enough, smart enough, capable enough.

One of the loveliest things I’ve seen in my life was a photograph of my sixteen-year-old mother. I saw it once in a moment of idleness and have not seen it since. My mother is in profile, sitting on a bed with her back against the wall, and her long hair is unbearably exotic to me, I, who have only ever seen it cropped close to her jaw. Perhaps I find this photograph so striking because it depicts a time when my mother was close to me in age, something I have difficulty imagining. Will I feel the same way at fifty, looking at pictures of her taken now, and will she seem so wonderful to me as her teenage counterpart does today?

When someone mentions an attractive woman, or I am inspired to think of beauty in its female form, I think of a small kitchen with the doors wide open, and a little balcony where wet blouses hang, and a girl peeling fruit in a plaid dress, standing by a cheap counter made to resemble marble. This girl does not have a face, but her hair is always long.

A tangent that is related, but not by very much:

School starts in five days, and I am frightened, but for one of those reasons difficult to explain to anyone but your mother. We have spoken, and I have partaken of the normal solace, but now that this continues to worry at me I think: maybe I need to carry my own weight sometimes? Maybe it is time the daughter learn to take leave of her mother.

(title from Lolita by Nabokov)

When viewed from space, the Ebro Delta looks like the geological capture of a primordial whale’s breaching. Driving up, the terrain I see only confirms this statement: neat squares of rice stalks separated by thin canals could easily be the interlocking cetacean vertebrae.

As we travel, the mountains that define my field of vision recede along a spectrum of color from charcoal to indigo to warm gray, with no apparent logical order in between. These chains of rock, I think, could be substituted for fins in my imaginary whale. Already I am imagining Oparin’s abiogenesis, and my huge aquatic mammal swimming in the soup, though this makes little sense from an evolutionary standpoint. When my brother asks who I named him after, when I am in a good mood I answer, typically, “Alexander the Great”. Maybe next time I shall say “Alexander Oparin” and instruct him to purchase spectacles and grow a goatee.

We emerge from the hotel every morning and drive around the coast. Our oldies station works, miraculously, even amid the teeming mass of mountain. One-hit wonders until the car strikes sand and we unload, bringing Pikachu towels and cheese sandwiches from the trunk and to the shore.

On the first day we visit a curious strip of land that cuts the Mediterranean so that there is visible water on both sides. “You can have your pick,” my father says, as though this lovely dual beach were the product of his own efforts.

After a swim it is decided that we simply must visit a bird viewing tower, and so when she is through with salt water my mother rises and the rest of us follow like a string of ducklings. The depressions her feet make on the sand give me a path and a pattern, staying much after she herself has disappeared from view.

I am in New York, buying English books (at the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue, thoughts of Kelly prompt me to purchase “The Cave” to replace “Death at Intervals”) and eating cheesecake at Junior’s in Grand Central Station. I have rediscovered Milano cookies, Starburst and English muffins, which I eat in the mornings when jet lag forces me awake. English muffins, I have decided, are the pinnacle of good eating.

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I puckered my lips (made me look like a hotel chain cabaret dancer), furrowed my brow (made me look like a disgruntled and exceptionally tan Oxford scholar), exposed my arm muscles (made me quickly realize that I possess none). I even practiced the most steely, hard-as-nails adolescent gesture I know: the callous digitus impudicus, commonly known in Western culture as “the finger”. Almost immediately I felt terrible for committing such a grave injustice against my innocent reflection, and attempted to patch things up with a benevolent smile, but then that felt obnoxiously self-serving and then I kinda went “GRAAAH” and gave up and went to fetch myself a Popsicle from the freezer (great for comforting the soul, not great for my figure or Operation: Look Decent in Bikini, but then again I’ve decided not to shave my legs this summer so it’s not like I’m going to look good in a swimsuit anyway).

I’ve always been a little on the short side and this, coupled with my elementary school haircut, gives people the impression that I’m younger than I actually am. Hair dressers pin my hair back with the multi-colored barrettes reserved for children, waiters bring me crayons, next door-neighbors pat me fondly on the head. I am used to this treatment, and am usually quite fond of it, despite the General Rule of Teenagerdom #15: Thou shall throw a tantrum when treated as a kid.

However, next week I will be going on a tenth grade graduation cruise, and on aforementioned cruise I shall attempt to pull off a dastardly maneuver. This maneuver requires of me a certain level of toughness. A HERCULEAN LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS.

Needless to say, my current toughness level is nowhere near A HERCULEAN LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS. It ranks somewhere between A CAREBEAR LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS and A PLANKTON LEVEL OF TOUGHNESS.

My practice sessions in the mirror have not improved that measly toughness level but I fancy myself a little better prepared now. Whether this is foolishness, spurred on by that cocky wink I flashed at my reflective counterpart, or some kind of previously unknown bravery blossoming from deep within my endocrine system I do not know, but I’ll accept anything I can get (as a substitute for the halberd I cannot bring aboard)!

I shall let you know how this maneuver of mine fares. PRAY/RAIN DANCE FOR ME, INTERNET. KYLIE, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, PLEASE DO YOUR CHEROKEE WAR CHIEF DANCE. IT’S TOTALLY FOR A GOOD CAUSE.

2009, you weren’t much of a looker, and you kicked me in the ass when I deserved it, and a couple of times when I didn’t. Economically weighing the pros and the cons of 2009, I’d say this was the worst year of my life. All iffy fifteen years of it! Good thing, I guess, that you don’t weigh years that way.

I’m pleased with the things I learnt from you, 2009, like how superior plaid pajamas are to other varieties of pajamas, and how to deal with bipolar II in a parental unit, and how to write without over-using dashes and fragmented sentences and adjectives like “ebony”. I’m less happy with the aforementioned ass-kicking you dealt me, but hey, that’s how it goes, I guess. I’m sorry I can’t be “profound”, or mention anything “game-changing” (one of my father’s famous phrases) or “miraculous” that happened to me this year. I’d say I don’t really care about New Year’s anyway, it’s just a flip of the digits of an intangible number, but I’m wearing a party hat, aren’t I? Gotta live up to it, right?

I hope we can part on good terms, 2009, good in the “I’ll pretend I didn’t see you in the supermarket check-out line” way, good in the “no more goddamn croquets, Miss Applebaum” way. Yeah. Just let your buddy 2010 know that, next year, I’ll be dealing out the ass-kicking.