Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [77]
When a woman has not touched the part of her spirit that is God, she cannot offer God to her children. She cannot give love, perhaps because she has not received love. She follows the rules that say that love, loving, and the mercy of love are weaknesses. When a woman with a closed heart is placed in the role of a mother, she can’t be anything but weak.
The women in Rhonda’s life had nourished her with closed hearts. They didn’t know it, but Rhonda felt it. All of her life, she felt like a motherless child. She had not been watered by grace, pruned by mercy, or tilled by love. Rhonda had been taught the rules of mothering. She had not been taught how to temper them gracefully. She had been taught how to be strong. She had not been taught the gentle, graceful strength of meekness. Rhonda had heard that the meek shall inherit the earth, but she could not figure out how they would do it. How she would do it. She was a stunted child who had not yet touched the woman, the mother, or the essence of God in her spirit. She had not been taught how to do it, but she was willing.
At 4:30, she walked to the pay telephone at the corner to call Daddy’s house. It felt so good to talk to Damon. Gemmia wouldn’t talk; she just cried. Rhonda asked her father if he would bring the children over in the morning. He said he would, and he told her about an empty apartment on the top floor of his apartment building. It was small, he said, but affordable. Daddy agreed to talk to the landlord.
By the time Rhonda walked back into her apartment, it was exactly five o’clock. She lay down across the mattress. At five minutes to eight, the doorbell rang. Walking toward the door, she could see John’s shadow through the lace curtains. She took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob. Rhonda could feel the calm energy that had pierced her body earlier in the day leave her. Her heart began to pound. Her knees grew weak.
By eight o’clock, John was gone, and Nisa was asleep in her mother’s arms.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
What’s the Lesson When You Learn the Lesson, Then Forget It?
For the rest of my life there are two days that will never again trouble me. The first day is yesterday with all its blunders and tears, its follies and defeats. Yesterday has passed away, beyond my control forever. The other day is tomorrow with its pitfalls and threats, its dangers and mystery. Until the sun rises again, I have no stake in tomorrow, for it is still unborn.
Og Mandino, in The Return of the Ragpicker
RHONDA DID HER BEST to like her newfound stepmother, brothers, and sisters. She was surprised to find that they already knew Grandma and Ray. The boys and girls were excited to finally meet their “big sister” and even more excited that she was their neighbor. Whenever they heard Rhonda and her children leaving their fourth-floor apartment, they would open the door of their first-floor apartment just to say hi. Rhonda did her best to be nice to them, but the fact that they even existed made her furious.
Her new apartment wasn’t just tiny, she was sure it was the place that had given birth to claustrophobia. The front door opened into the bathroom and blocked the doorway that led to the children’s room. You could turn around in the kitchen, if you did it slowly. The living room was a perfect little box. It had two windows that overlooked the alley behind the building. The first thing Rhonda did was check to make sure there were no dogs in the alley. There was one. When you stepped out of the living room, you were in the bedroom. The only place you could go in the bedroom was onto the bed, which was pushed up against the dresser. The best thing about the apartment was that there were never any BVDs hanging in the bathroom. Rhonda and the children shared the apartment without benefit of male companionship.
It took about a year for Rhonda to get settled in and to realize that she could not raise three children on a $229 check. What didn’t go for rent went to feed her three growing youngsters.