Only 6 more days

Excerpt from Sandra Cisneros's short story: Eleven

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

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A colleague mentioned the other day that her 3-year old son, just before he was to turn 4, asked her if she was going to miss the 3-year old son. And that comment made me instantly miss 3-year old Moses. I know that little boy will always be inside of our growing young man, but I sure am going to miss him as we see him less and less. He's the little boy that asks me to play cars with him. The little boy that likes to suck his thumb, pinch his belly button, and snuggle with me. The little boy that gets such joy as he sings made-up songs while he plays the xylophone. The 3-year old Moses will always have a special special space in my heart. and i will keep wishing desperately for time to move just a bit slower.