双语散文:今年我已经十一岁了
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 fours, and threee, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your leeventh birthdays yu 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 say 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 insides 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 eeven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes 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. Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hndred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting three with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth. |