Feliz Cumpleanos, Amorcito

This is (Carlos) Gabriel Sanchez (Manchinelly) who I love and am married to.

Today he is 34 years old.
He's done so much to make me happy in the 5 years that I've known him; Things like, he's really good looking and I like to look at him. Also things like he likes to go out to dinner and so do I so that's helpful. He wakes up super early every single day to go and win our loaf of bread and he never complains (except some Sundays) that he's really tired. He buys insurance policies for everything we own so that we're safe and taken care of. He puts the new registration sticker on my license plate a week after the other one expired because I would never have remembered it. He's cheerful and fun to be around and, while it's possible for us to fight about everything from Scrabble to piano moving to immigration laws, we're mostly happy because he is so great and not because life is so so easy for him or us.


He is inherently social and everyone likes him. I mean EVERYONE. It's a little ridiculous sometimes for me to think about but he also really likes himself (in one of those healthy ways). I guess that's what other people respond to. He's comfortable to be himself wherever he goes and talking on the phone doesn't scare him at all. Neither does the Statue of Liberty. As you can gather, that makes him perfect for me. He is stubborn and opinionated but so am I, and more than him so that also makes him wonderful...to be able to live with me and still want to keep living with me.

My family would vote unanimously that Gabriel saved me from certain aimless floating and failed relationships with poets and lead singers and introverted artists. I didn't really need saving in those ways or any way but Gabriel just IS what I am not. He is brown and I am not, he is a boy and I am not, he is disciplined,not me, extremely put together, takes a daily shower, nope, not me, hardworking, organized, productive, forgiving, nuh-uh, obedient, He's even a better mother than me if that's possible. I have him on imagination and bargain shopping, frivolity and overeating but other than that, the man changed the trajectory of who I might have become if left to my own devices. Basically I celebrate Gabriel today because it is the anniversary of his birth. I thank Maria Elena Manchinelly de Sanchez for putting him in the world. My whole daily life is a celebration of sorts that I get to be with him forever and, really, truly be so happy about that. Feliz cumpleanos, mi amor y que tengas mil anos mas, llenos de felicidad y besos y carne roja.


Te amo para siempre jamas.