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 foolish, and that's the part of you that's still nine. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mami'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.

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.

You're eleven today. You're eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish you were just one again.

Happy birthday my little baby girl, I love you very much.

Adapted from "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Random House, New York. 1991)