The other day, Emma came home with a love letter from Luis.  Yes, another love letter.  Yes, the same Luis.

“What does it say?,” I asked, looking at it with her, baffled by the Spanish skills of this first grade Romeo.  Emma wasn’t sure about some of the words, prompting me to go to my trusty friend, Google Translate.

My dearest Emma, You are great.  You are my best friend.  You are very pretty.  Come over to my house.  We will play games.  Your hair is very pretty.  Your friend, Luis

Kudos to Luis for having such lovely penmanship, knowing all the right things to say, and for clearly being bilingual.  (And please forgive me, Luis, for reading your letter silently to myself and imagining your words in a Spanish accent, a la Antonio Banderas as Puss-n-Boots.  I couldn’t help myself.)

“Well, that was nice,” I said.  “And he has such neat handwriting.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighed, looking down at the paper.  “We were ALL writing letters in our class today.  We got the paper from Mrs. Cantu and were supposed to write a letter in Spanish for one of our friends.”

“How sweet that Luis wrote a letter to you,” I said.  “How did he like the letter that you wrote him?”

She frowned at me.  “I did not write LUIS a letter, Mommy.”

Que?

“Oh,” I said.  “Well, who did you write a letter to?”

She grinned at me. “I wrote a letter to GABRIEL.”

Oh, my.

Mi querido Luis, lo siento mucho que mi hija tiene la intención de romper su corazón. Pareces un buen chico. Dale un par de años, y tal vez ella va a darse cuenta de que un niño bilingüe que puede apreciar el buen pelo es un buen partido. Su amiga, la mamá de Emma

And if that was bad Spanish… blame Google Translate, y’all.