“If only for a day, I got to be "Dr. Harris, Neuroscientist" again... It felt nice.”

“For just as I am certain of God and His existence, I am equally certain that one day we will meet... or meet again. And that will be a wonderful day!”

“Be nice... until it's time to not be nice!”

“At Angelita’s, my favorite food was a plain bean burrito in a flour tortilla. It was simple, but tasty! I loved bean burritos. They were my comfort food. They were my “little friends!” For my first day at school, my aunt made me three of them. She wrapped them up tightly in aluminum foil and then packed them in a brown paper sack. At lunchtime, in the cafeteria, I got ready to greet my little friends. I was nervous, as it was my first day of school, but I knew the burritos would soon warm my stomach and comfort me. I looked around the lunch room and saw other kids with their cafeteria trays and their perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust neatly trimmed off and their bottle of juices and bags of Fritos and then . . . I pulled out a burrito. “Hey! What’s that?” A gringa girl shouted at me, pointing at my burrito. “Uh . . . nothing! Nada!” I replied as I quickly shoved it back into the sack. I was hungry, but every time I got ready to pull one out, it seemed as if there was another kid ready to stare and point at me. I was embarrassed! I loved my burritos, but in that cafeteria, I was ashamed of them. They suddenly felt very heavy and cold. They suddenly felt very Mexican. I was ashamed of my little friends and so . . . I went hungry.”

“One day, I saw a tiny nopalito (cactus sapling) growing not too far from an old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house in Zacatecas. I told my mom that I would protect it from the wind and that I would water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and strong. My mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's a nopalito, it is it's struggle that makes it so beautiful...”

“Nice is nice. Kind is kind. Love is love, and Life is life.”

“Over the past 8 years, I have stripped my life down. I don’t need as much as I thought I did. It was hard at first to make that change. I had to have faith and patience. And so, I did. Now, I have God and great people in my life. Everything else just seems to follow. Sometimes we don’t understand about the need to live more simply. We can make appointments all day long, 7 days a week. We can even schedule and plan for our deaths. I was fortunate to be freed to really be myself again, while there is still time and something left of me. And now, up here, there’s nothing but me (and Kilo) and the sky and a million billion stars. And once again, I am free to dream...”