A Birthday!

So it was my birthday this month. It came and went and was actually very fun with no big incidents. I am now the BIG 3-1 which puts me in my thirties for sure. When I was 30 I was still barely out of my twenties now I'm really there. My cousin has an English PHD and reads great inspirational books. She quoted this author a few years ago on her birthday. The story has stuck with me since then and I re-read it this year and had to smile all over. It sums up my feelings about age and birthdays just like it did for my cousin. The authors name is Sandra Cisneros it's from short story "Eleven" in her book Woman Hollering Creek.

"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 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 truck 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 even feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is."
Thanks Catherine! Someday I will feel like I'm 31, but maybe not today!