Rising above it all

I've been finding myself very impatient these days. Every time I turn on a news program everything always has such a negative spin on it! I know we can't live with our heads in the sand, but we have to rise above how this makes us feel! I find myself being very irritated by people who keep their heads down into their phones while walking on a public sideway. There is so much beauty to see if you just life your head up to notice the billowing clouds in the sky or to consciously feel the sunlight on your face. I start to feel myself being pulled into the seemingly “hurry up and get there” when there is no rush to arrive on time because I left with plenty of time to get there at least 5 minutes early. But this is all trivial because I’ve been through much worse. Many of you know that I’ve been through a lot of physical and emotional challenges in my life and continue to do so. Currently I'm having to deal with painful bruising and swelling for which I believe is caused by having to take Warfarin to thin my blood to prevent a blood clot forming on my mechanical heart valve and unfortunately I have to be on this medication for the rest of my life. I’ve always managed to get through tough times with the only way I know how, with faith in a higher power that I’ve come to know on a very personal level. When you stare death in the face you have some profound experiences that forever change the way you view life.

Now I know that a lot of people get this because they too have met challenges head on with the knowledge of God either leading the way by keeping a clear mind or by holding us up when we have no energy left to go on by ourselves. For those of you who have a sense of an unseen force that motivates us to be better people, to have compassion for our fellow human beings, and honor the earth and all it’s living creatures, it is that power that keeps our heads above the water. For those who don’t see life as a miracle created by an unseen energy force but still feel that doing good to help those in need, or to help wherever you can, is an acknowledgement that something beyond your physical body and can contribute to positive change. It the present climate of political uncertainty I find it most challenging to keep myself in that place of grounded energy that keeps me healthy and whole. By taking 5 minutes in the morning before I get out of bed to say my prayer or mantra helps me to keep a more focused path to see the love in everyone I encounter in the coming day. I ask for God to use me as a tool of positive love towards all human beings, regardless if I agree with them or not., to use me as He sees fit and to cast judgment out of my mind but to be discerning and to stand up to injustice by

taking action. I pray to keep my family, friends, colleagues and so-workers safe and healthy, as well as praying for love and peace for my neighbors, neighborhood, city, state, country, and the world. This may sound so far reaching but we can use all the affirmative energy we can muster to get through each and every day. These are certainly trying times for many of us in America and the world and while we go about our daily lives life will happen all around us. It’s up to us how we will perceive it and deal with it. My hope is that each of us will take the time to take a breath and just be grateful for what we do have and for all we’ve been able to accomplish thus far in our lives and know that with God all things are possible. Because when it’s all said and done our bodies will parish and what left are the memories of how we’ve touched others, good bad and indifferent. I choose to nourish as many good memories as possible. Have faith as life is a blessing!

August 18th Update So it’s been just over one weeks since being released from my 7 week stay in the hospital. Things are going very well in my healing process although I had to go back to the ER on Sunday morning because I was experiencing a lot of pain in my chest and had major chronic diarrhea. (yeah maybe it’s more information shared than necessary but I have to keep it real… lol). I ended up going to the ER in the new Zuckerberg SF General Hospital since it’s really close to my home. Beautiful and as modern as it is, I won’t ever go there again

by choice. I should have stuck with where I knew I would be treated with my full history intact, but all in all being there I was set back on the track. It turned out that I was release from the hospital last week without the full medicine regimen that I should have been on and I knew this when I started to fill my own pill box for the week. I was given subpar treatment for the pericarditis, which is swelling around the heart, which caused the pressure to push out on my ribs on my left side. This happened on Saturday night as I couldn’t lie flat without extreme pain on my ribs and I didn’t get any sleep that night. It felt like I was being stabbed with a sharp knife. So when I went to the ER in the morning they assessed me and managed my pain as best they could and then told me that I would be admitted for an overnight stay. At first I just thought, “Please God not again!” but even thought I was not happy about it as I had barely had the chance to be home for a few days I knew I needed to be taken care of.

By Monday midday once I got on the right medications and enough time past for the meds to do it’s thing and the pain started to subside. I asked what the plan was for my release but since they had not heard back form my surgeon they couldn’t give me an answer. I convinced them that I take good care of myself and religiously stick to my medical regimen and that I really didn’t want to stay in the hospital another night. The attending physician agreed that it would be agreeable to discharge and started the process rolling. To be quite honest I just did not enjoy being there. At UCSF Medical Center all the nurses were great! The food at UCSF was 1000 times ahead of anything I could have imagined for hospital food. They have a full menu, which for some reason reminded me of Denny’s extensive menu. At Zuckerberg Hospital you didn’t get to make ‘any choices’, you get what you get. When I was being screened for admittance I told them I was Pescatarian, which they really didn’t know what that was (Fish and vegetarian diet). I was given a dry egg and dry hashbrown breakfast , a chicken dish for lunch and then Meatloaf for dinner. Not good. Luckily friends brought me sandwiches and I had dinner when I was released from the hospital Monday night. In my final few hours of my stay my cardiac surgeon came and saw me. He had three first year med students with him. He wanted them to listen to my heart since it was a good chance for them to hear first hand what a mechanical valve sounded like. He also told them that I was a great patient, that I was an over the top, in great health fitness coach and that my dietary lifestyle too was over the top which has been a tremendous help getting me through the delicate and severe health issue prompting the need for the open heart surgery. It was humbling for sure and with that it made my stay at Zuckergerg General Hospital worth the experience helping, once again, plant a seed of realness for the new med students to realize that with each case there is an individual and that they need to be treated as such. Gods amazing power at work again!

So I was sent home to continue my healing. I have a nurse coming every other day to help me with my IV home infusion. It’s a 24/7 ordeal which is just like toting my love/hate relationship with my IV pole in the hospital, although I have a lot more freedom with my big ass fanny pack mobile mini pump and medicine bag. I tend to forget I have it and it pulls me back when I’ve reached the end of my tether. Things could be worse but I only have to live with this until September 13th which then I’ll be off all antibiotics, and hopefully get my bowels back on track, again keeping it real… hehe. Anyway, I am home again. The construction of the new apartment building outside our living room window hasn’t been so bad this past week but as they prepare for the first floor of apartments I’m certain that we will be having a lot of hammering and other noise sooner than later. With the dust and noise swirling around I would keep the windows closed but with our west facing windows it gets fairly hot in our 411sqft apartment.

With the sawing and dust flying around we can’t have the windows open, which sucks big time. So I am praying that that part stays low key as I’m using this downtime to finish studying for my Sports Nutrition certification and to keep using my meditation/healing ritual for a full and speedy recovery. With that being said I need to listen to my body and be mindful that it needs the time to fully go through the healing process. It’s easy for my mind to make me want to just run forward but I obviously need to walk before I can run. It is also a bummer that this whole experience will bring me to being out of work for nearly ½ a year really makes it difficult to just sit back to heal, but as I mentioned in a previous post my friends and family have been there for me in the past as has my faith in God that really makes me stay calm and centered. On that note I want to share the fundraiser page that my dear friend David Aguilar created on "GoFundMe.com" that was put together so that those of you who are able, or are moved to assist Brett and I financially over the course of my health challenge as I have not been able to work and still have 3 months for recovery where I might possibly go back to work part-time in a couple months and the stress is not here yet but by beginning of September it's going to look challenging. It's humbling to be in this position in this unforeseen situation, but again I am grateful to all of you for the love and support over the past 2 ½ month with your well wishes and prayers and contributions to the GoFundMe and the fundraiser that my colleagues at work held for me last month, so thank you again! https://www.gofundme.com/2innmvw So dear friends I end this post with this personal thought, “You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friends nose”. I don’t know why that came to my mind to share but in that there must be some hidden wisdom… lol. I'm glad we picked each other!.

Until next time may God bless your every moment and may all the Love and Light of the Universe surround you always! XOXO, Jesse

August 10th - Week 7 Update Well another week gone by and sorry for my absence. There was no news to report for week five except that I was starting to get totally bored! I was starting to get stir crazy so I just read and tried to focus on logistics of finances having not worked for since June 10. I’m not worried at all about that as I know having been through this before that God, and the help of my friends will help me get through this.

It all seemed to being going well as I was being assessed to be able to finish out week 6 of IV antibiotics at home, but then I suddenly had an episode on Saturday night with severe pain in my abdomen and head just as I had experienced 7 weeks prior in Grass Valley when I had to be taken to the emergency room there. I was taken to have an CAT Scan right away and they found an aneurysm had developed near the infection site and it posed a danger of rupturing so they schedule me for surgery as soon as my surgeon was prepared to move forward so we planned for Monday morning August 1. As much as I had hoped to avoid surgery, the main goal of spending all this time in the hospital was to get my body in optimal health and that I was. Sunday was spent resting as I was already taking heavy pain medication and the IV protocol. Close friends and family visited me that Sunday but I wasn’t much of a host as I mostly slept. This was all just surreal going through the whole open-heart surgery once again. But prepared I was! I just kept saying my prayers and mantras to continue the healing energy for my body and my mind. I have to say that the mental preparation could not be any more important than the physical preparation! It was going to be a test of strength to be sure. I was rolled into the operating room at 7:30AM. What is usually a 5-hour aortic valve replacement and ascending aorta repair operation ended up being an 11-hour event. All in all it was a successful operation and my Doctor was very pleased with the results. Apparently the 11-hour operation was because of the aggressive strain of staph bacteria and the location of the infection that my cardiac surgeon had to make sure that all of the infection was completely removed. What that entailed was basically replacing the infected parts of my heart and plumbing and then irrigating my entire exposed organ system within my chest cavity with antibiotics to make sure that all of the infection was cleared. When I woke up in the ICU it was 11:30 PM. I knew I was in the hospital, I knew I’d had open-heart surgery, I knew that the real test was just beginning, recovery! I was still on ventilation when I woke up so the time had come for the breathing tube to be removed from my throat and when doing so the nurses urged me to breathe. But I couldn’t breathe for the mucous had accumulated at the bottom of the entry way to my trachea. They kept urging me to “Breathe, breathe, breathe, just breather”. I felt like I was downing. They started to lie me back down into my bed. It only made it worse. At that moment I could imagine what my brother Joe must have felt with pulmonary fibrosis. I began to panic. I grabbed the arm of the attending nurse and had him stop lying me back. You’ve got to breathe they’d say. I motioned that I couldn’t breathe. The time was ticking and I knew it. “How long could I hold my breath”, I wondered. I motioned again that I couldn’t breathe. I tried to talk, “Suction”. “What?”, the nurse asked. I made my self keep calm because if I didn’t I new I could die. I pulled it together and was barely able to udder the words to the male nurse, “I need suction”. They gave me the suction tube and put it into the back of my throat and coughed as best I could and a rush mucous cleared my throat. I began to breathe calmly. I don’t know that I have ever been through anything so scary in all my life!

Now comes the pain, my ribs felt like someone had sucker punched me a thousand times on each side plus being hit by a truck compounded with the trauma of already dealing with the infection in my body for the past 8 weeks prior to surgery date. They’d given me what they thought was a heavy dose of pain medications. I knew that I should have emphasized more clearly to the anesthesiologist before hand that I had a high tolerance to pain medication and to not hold back. I had to fight tooth and nail with my stone cold ICU nurse to get the high dosages of pain medication. It told her that each patient should be looked at as individuals and not regular textbook scenarios. Ugh, her we go again having to explain myself. It took 12 hours to get the pain to a manageable level. For the next 2 days they gradually increased the levels of pain medications so that they were in “therapeutic range”. So by Wednesday I started to get relief and being heavily medicated I was able to get some sleep at night but then by Thursday evening I started to difficulty sleeping for any stretch of time beyond an hour. This made me realize that I was on track to recovery, as my normal reaction is not having a normal sleep pattern.

The adventure continues. First of all I had been moved to 3 different rooms in the past week and I was getting a little disorientated. First I had my own room in the ICU for 2 days, and then I was moved to a shared room in ECCU, Extended Cardiac Care Unit. I had a roommate who was mad at the world. He must have been because he kept yelling at everyone who would come into the room. Fortunately for me my hearing really sucks, and I was exhausted, so it seemed easy to tune him out but it also took my meditation focus to the next level of consciousness. I had to block out the outside world to really focus on myself. It was a challenge I was up to but I still asked the nurse if I could have a private room, which I ended up getting the next day, day 5. So I was moved to the opposite side of the hospital wing and was put into a room that must have been an afterthought when putting it together because it was so tight to maneuver around with my IV pole, which went with me everywhere I had to go, but it didn’t matter I was a private room. All the while that I’ve been in the hospital orders were that I take walks periodically throughout the day, as this seems to be a prerequisite to being discharge from the hospital they want to make sure that you can manage under you own control. In the ICU I walked the day after surgery and again the second day. I was a walking fool, as I wanted to get better and feel ready for discharge from the hospital on day 10. Back to day 5, Friday, I got a private room. I’d taken three walks already and kept getting turned around. I had visitor that day and even they got confused on which way was what. At one point I ended up walking into my old room where someone was lying in the bed. Awkward! Now that I was feeling more in control of the pain and getting back to myself my old pattern of sleeplessness I asked for sleep aid. Ambien or trazadone was all they had to offer in the hospital. I chose the Ambien, which apparently made me a bit loopy. My nurse was giving me my nighttime dose of medications and I was making light with my nurse as we went for my walk. She didn’t seem amused and was already looking at me suspiciously. She was a very good nurse making sure I had everything I needed to assure I was comfortable. It came time for my last walk of the day. I was blabbing away with my nurse on my Ambien high and she would answer my questions which I assume maybe were too silly by the look on her face. We turned a corner and as I was feeling that I had enough of a walk I asked the wrong question, “Where are we going?” “Well we just pasted your room” she said. I relied, “I got so confused.” “You’re confused? It’s not good that you’re confused!” I was in trouble. I explained that I got turned around earlier that day when I was walking a visitor to the guest elevator. She wasn’t buying it. She really was worried. Around midnight I was told I that I was being moved immediately to a different room. I asked why but they wouldn’t say. I really didn’t care at that point as I was in la la land. I got up to help pack up my things as I had actually moved into the hospital with food, books, computer, iPad, and other things that made my 6 weeks stay more comfortable. “All you need to do is to stay in your bed”, my nurse told me. I had no control of what was happening. It really made me uncomfortable as I felt like I was being treated like I was going to hurt someone because all because I had taken Ambien. She kept asking me if I was okay. She actually ended up staying in my room keeping watch over me the whole night through. I got a bit creeped out! When I asked the next morning after shift change I was told that it was because of concern of me falling during the night. I have to admit that I was talking to people who weren’t there. I had my eyes closed and could see people in my room, friends mostly, and would have conversations with them but then when I opened my eyes the room was empty. Needless to say it took a couple days to get the Ambien out of my system as I was still talking to people in my lucid sleep only to open my eyes and no one was in my room. Freaky!

I’m feeling better and am scheduled to be discharged today, Wednesday August 10. It has been a rollercoaster of a health ride to say the least! My doctor reminded me of how dire the situation was when I arrived at the hospital 7 weeks ago and that’s not to mention the two weeks before that when it all started. It was like being in a truck accident, which put it all in perspective. Why don’t they tell you this before the operation? Well I guess if someone can imagine being hit by a truck and how intense the recovery process was going to be they might not go through with the operation! I have to say thanks again for all the prayers, positive vibes, positive energy, words of comfort and just being there for support. Thanks for those of you who were able to come to visit me in the hospital breaking up the monotony of monotony, for those gifts of food, chocolates, deserts, and magazines. It all helped, believe me! I’ll update you again as I settle back to being in my own home again! I know that with continued prayers I will be back doing things that I love, like writing and coloring, and creating workout programs for my clients! In the meantime wishes for good health to all of you and continued Love, Light, Peace, and Harmony to each and every one of you near and far. God bless you always! XOXO, Jesse

A month gone by...

Blog update- July 23

So I had a few test done this week. An TEE which is a “trans esophageal echo cardiogram” where they numb your throat with lidocain by gargling with it (the worse part of the whole thing) then put a long scope down your throat to do an echo cardiogram from the inside out to view the heart without the ribs being in the way. Then I had an MRI of my heart as well as an angiogram both with contrast to get better pictures of my arteries around my heart and to get a better view of the infection on my aorta and of the aortic valve and surrounding area. The preliminary report this morning was that there has been no significant change in the infection so things look pretty much the same. So my body and medicine are keeping the infection at bay. So that means we’re still on track to finish out the IV antibiotics unless there is a turn for the worse and I have to have surgery scheduled to get the infection out. In the meantime I am waiting to hear more from my surgeon on Monday after he has a better look at the images with the radiologist on Monday morning. It’s now been over a month since I’ve been in this hospital and 6 weeks total dealing with this infection. It’s now getting a little bit harder being here because of my limited variety of foods that are offered on the hospital room service menu. I’m really missing being able to cook at home and having the freedom to be able to run out to the grocery store to buy whatever it was I wanted to eat. It’s been great having friends be able to bring stuff for me and it’s not like I’m a food snob, it’s just that I try to take the best care of my body and that makes me I have been very particular in what I eat which mainly organic foods and certain brands that don’t contain extra ingredients that I don’t want in my body. So if you plan a visit and want to bring something food wise, a couple pieces of organic fruit is always a winner. ☺ I’ll have another update Monday afternoon. Thanks again for your love, support, prayers and positive energy!

I'm online again!

It’s been over three weeks since I’ve been back in the hospital and I’m still in a holding pattern as I await the IV antibiotics to do their thing in attacking the infection on my ascending aorta. One of my doctors said it would take at least 4 weeks for the medication to take effect, so I’m being a patient patient as I’ve got 3 more weeks of treatment. I'm feeling better every passing day and finally getting much more needed sleep. I'm walking 1 - 1 1 /2 miles each day and not feeling any tightness in my chest and no shortness of breath either. Throughout this process that started over 5 weeks ago, when I was first blindsided by the illness, I have managed to maintain a positive mindset, but it hasn’t been without some challenging moments. From the onset of being admitted into UCSF Medical Center and being told that the IV medical treatment would take 6 weeks minimum for it to take affect. If the antibiotics weren't able to clear the infection completely it would have to be surgically removed which also means having open heart surgery to replace the infected aortic root and aortic valve and replacing it with the same materials that I had originally replaced on my first open heart surgery in 2008. I had it in my mind that I would be in the hospital for the 6 weeks duration of the IV treatment. But I didn’t foresee that I’d have to convince two of the three teams to take a more positive look at the treatment. You see the infection is on my aortic root on artificial mesh tubing, which doesn’t get regular blood flow making it a bit more difficult to treat. So the cardiac medical and the infectious disease teams are just going by the text books, which tell them that surgery is the only way to go leaving them narrow sighted in seeing me as an individual. What they failed to remember is that in their text book guidelines is also says that when there is a case that doesn’t entirely fit inside those guideline it should be treated on that individuals case. It’s been a blessing to have my cardiac surgeon leading the fight to get me as healthy as can be and to search out options that warrant treating me on the merits of progress that my body has presented. He affirmed my feelings that it might take some time but it is possible as there have been 10% cases that were effectively treated by antibiotic therapy. But one thing that makes it particularly challenging is that this is a teaching hospital so there are rotations of team members and team leaders meaning that I have total strangers taking over my case weekly. I have to start almost from scratch to get these people to see me as a patient that they most likely have never had the privilege of working with. Doctors have told me that they don’t have the occurrence of their patients even understanding what the illness is that they are dealing with nor did they want to know. I have to work hard to keep myself focused on the task at hand of seeing the infection shrinking on a daily basis. I know how powerful the mind can be, and by putting plenty of faith in Gods hands, as he makes miracles happen, and also knowing that giving it time the medicine will do what it was intended for, it’s a formula for complete healing!Here is a photo of the scan of the infections. It's just above my heart on the ascending aorta.

I have a crystal clear vision of where my health is going and nothing will veer me from it even though time and time again I am confronted with it. It’s that same discouragement that we encountered when we were growing up with people saying, “Oh you could never do that”, or “Why waste time on something that will never happen”. What I have to say to that is had I listened to those voices of negativity and discouragement I would never have accomplished many of the major pleasures in my life however trivial that may seem. Like being Drum Major of our high school marching band my senior year, “They’ll never pick a senior to that position”; or my 16 years as a professional dancer. “You can’t dance”, “You’ll never be good enough”; or my title as Mr. America master bodybuilding champion, “You’re not big enough”; or when in 1990 being told, “You’ve got maybe a year to live”, and walking out of the doctor’s office; and then the doozy, “We don’t know what’s wrong with you, we don’t know how to treat your illness”, being sent home to die and here I am alive today to write this blog! Ha, I did all that and then some. I visualize the white blood cells going after the infection aggressively by piggy backing on each other to get to that hard to reach areas of the infection. If you've never seen white blood cells chase after bacteria here is the link for a YouTube 60 second video showing it in action. The body is an amazing creation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_mXDvZQ6dU So you see, the power of God, the power of the mind, and the power of Love has the ability to move mountains. As the course in Miracles states, “There is no order of difficulty in Miracles”. Focused attention in meditation and prayer we can overcome all obstacles. Life is good, life is strong and the lifeblood of Christ flows freely in my arteries and veins bringing healing, wholeness, and perfect health in my body, heart, and soul. And so it is! Amen. Thanks for letting me share with you and thanks for your love, well wishes, and positive healing energy sent to me over the etheric airwaves from around the world! Until the next update, Love and Light always, Jesse

Holland 9 hours earlier that PST

So it's been 5 weeks since I arrived and spent the first full day at our new home in The Hague. Cooked a great home cooked dinner. A recipe from a going away gift to Brett from Caroline Rocher who used to dance with him in Alonzo Kings Ballet. I cooked Pumpkin Chicken Curry and it was delicious, so thank you Caroline, and thank you Richard Marsten for the tip on how to better get my pumpkin ready for easier peeling next time.

I have the link to my nights cooking on FaceBook page if you want to connect through FB otherwise look for it on youtube

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150100216298437

Life is great and now we're watching the Academy Awards at 2:30AM, way too late so I guess we're missing America tradition just now... lol

More soon! Lots of Love, Light, Gratitude and Transformation, Jesse

And our little bitsy in our new living room.


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It really does get better!

I feel the need to go further back in time to better help you understand my journey and it is a LONG journey so please, bear with me…

In 1966, Fresno, California, was the year that I started Kindergarten. Now if you don’t mind my saying so, I was very cute as a kid growing up, I see that now but didn’t know to look at myself that way. But there was never a loss of having girls like me and wanting to hold my hand. But I wouldn’t have any of it. It was my teacher, a very beautiful lady, whose name

escapes me just now, whom I had a crush on from the first day of school. She had a very neatly combed
hairdo and wore the fashions of the day. I would do everything she wanted us to do and beyond to get a good
grade in class. I was the first person in class to get a gold star for learning how to tie my shoe… LOL

But there was someone else that I really liked. It was a boy. His name was Will. We were buddies for 2 years. We would go swimming at the local Public swimming pool and play for hours at the community center. There was always something to do to keep us occupied. Again I had another crush. Two to be exact both were our swimming instructors. One was a beautiful girl who had a very curvy body another was an older boy who had a very tight and trim body. It was very confusing to me how I could have these feelings. I just let them wander and not think about it after classes were over. Will and I never talked about that, but we did talk about other girls that were in our class.

I was raised in a Catholic household. It was in first grade when I started to go to Sunday school and to catechism on Wednesdays after school. I went to bible study classes and learned the life of Jesus Christ and the words of the God as written in the Holy Bible. I said my prayers and asked God for His guidance in every instance that I felt I needed His help.

I was scared of the Devil as was professed by the nuns in church classes that I should be if I was to live a holy life and be saved from the fires of hell. I was so scared that I would have dreams of our neighborhood children being chased by the devil around the fence of our house. I would wake up sweating with the blankets pulled over my head hoping that the Devil wouldn’t peak under the covers and chase me too.

Man was the message pounded into my head! Be a good Christian, and I did everything I could possibly do as a young human being living a life of love and obedience, only it didn’t make any sense to me. I did everything right but I was still having feeling that I couldn’t explain.

I had always gotten along with just about everybody making friends easily as the years went by and changes continued to take place. All of us playing in the schoolyard and then back home in the neighborhood street learning to ride bikes and play marbles. But then there was this one incident that happened that year of

second grade. There was a girl I liked named Lorie. She had a good friend named Rita. They were almost always together unless we were all is class. Rita wasn’t in our homeroom class so that’s when Lorie and I would talk. I told Lorie that I really liked her and wanted to be my girlfriend. She didn’t give me an answer.

After class that day Will and I were walking across the school yard towards the gate looking at each other as we talked about who knows what. We were almost to the back gate when we heard someone yelling, “Rita, Rita”. When we both looked towards the fence here came Rita stomping her white patent leather shoes directly towards. Her pink short flared dress swayed madly back and forth, her short black hair curled at the ends swooping up towards the sky with a white bow pinned in her part bobbed up and down. “Rita, Rita”, I could see Rita’s mom calling to her from her car beyond the fence and gate. “Rita, you get back here!” she demanded.

Just as Rita had reached us she stood feet wide apart put both hands on her hips cocked her arm back and slapped me right across the cheek. “That’s because you like my friend Lorie and not me! “ Then she turned around and stomped back towards her mom giggling waiting at the car. “Rita you get back here right now!” I was mortified

What? What did I do? Was she jealous because I had asked Lorie to be my girlfriend? I never found out. But I made sure not to allow myself to get between two best girlfriends again!

By second grade we moved to a new house in a different part of the city and started classes at a new elementary school. I liked my teacher Mrs. McNairy. She was a great teacher and made studying fun.
I became very involved in after school activities. Track and field Arts and crafts. I even started to mentor younger students that were new to the after school program.

I was also very busy with my bible study classes. My younger brother coming with me to some of the same classes as he got older. I had studied hard and finally made it to my first communion by the end of second grade. I was well on my way to being a servant of Christ.

More in a couple of days...