A real cork wall, in the kitchen, behind the table where she does her homework — pinned with the polaroids her family and her friends took with her, and one each for the people who couldn't be there.
You were three pounds eleven ounces and you came home in a sweater your tía knitted in two days because nobody believed you were coming that early. You yelled the whole way home. I am writing this on the kitchen counter on a Wednesday in July, sixteen years later, while you are upstairs FaceTiming Naomi about, I think, eyeliner. You are still yelling. I have never loved a sound more.
Sixteen. I had to look at the calendar twice. I was nine when you were born and I told mom, very seriously, that I was going to be in charge of you. You proved, by the time you were about eleven months old, that you were in fact going to be in charge of me, and you have been ever since. Happy birthday, kid. You drive in two months. God help us all.
Mija — sixteen years. Your mother and I were married seven years before you were born and somehow it feels like we have been your parents for longer than we were anything else. You make the house louder, and braver, and better. I am proud of you on a Tuesday in March, and on a Friday in September, and on every day in between. Today is no exception. Happy birthday.
LILA. SIXTEEN. WE MADE IT. I have known you since the fourth grade and I have a polaroid of us from the school camping trip in 2022 where my hair is on fire (figuratively) and you are LAUGHING and I look like I am about to commit a crime and that photo is the one I want at our wedding. NOT MINE. OURS. Anyway happy birthday I love you the violin lesson last week was iconic I am going to be a virtuoso by Christmas. xoxo NOMS
Mi nieta querida — dieciséis años. No puedo creerlo. Tu mamá tenía dieciséis cuando me dijo que iba a estudiar en Berkeley y yo lloré toda la noche. Ahora tienes la misma edad que ella, y miro tus fotos en el teléfono y veo a tu mamá, y veo a tu papá, y veo a tu abuelo Rafael, que te hubiera querido tanto. Que Dios te bendiga, mija. Con todo mi amor desde San Antonio. — Abuela.
Lila — your eighth-grade English teacher here, sending this from a kitchen in Oakland because your mother very kindly asked. You wrote, in November of 2024, a five-paragraph essay on Their Eyes Were Watching God that I have, two and a half years later, not forgotten a single sentence of. You will write many more. I am rooting for every one of them. Happy sixteenth, Lila.
Lila. It is Jojo, from Portland, your fourth-grade best friend before Naomi was. I know it has been six years. Your mom found me on Facebook last week and asked if I would write you something for your sixteenth. The answer is yes, obviously. I still think about the time we tried to build a fort out of all the couch cushions and your mom came home and was, briefly, very confused. I hope sixteen is loud and good and full of people who love you. It looks like it is. I miss you, friend.
LILA YOU ARE SIXTEEN!! I AM ELEVEN!! That is FIVE MORE YEARS for me which is so far away. Mom says I can come to your birthday and bring my polaroid camera because I got one for Christmas. I am going to take a picture of you blowing out the candles and ALSO one of the cake before anyone eats it because that is the BEST PART. I love you. You are my favorite cousin. (Sorry Theo.)
“Sixteen is, in the end, just a Sunday in August — except for everyone who came through your kitchen to leave you something to keep.”
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