USA-Africa Family:
This is a note to you all from our sister, La Vonda.
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Hello and how are you? I received the check It was like a gift from God. I was on the verge of closing my daughter Sarah's college fund. I didn't know how I would continue the 100 dollar a month allocation. My mind was nearly wrecked by this. Since the age of nine Sarah has firmly believed she would attend Harvard. She has dedicated herself by word and deed. Last year, she tested in the top 3 percent of math students in the nation. She tested in the top 11 percent of science students in the nation. My sister, Heather, is a teacher and she is very invested in Sarah's dream. Last summer she took Sarah on a college visit (using her own funds) to Harvard and Yale. Sarah wears those lapel pins each and every day.
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You do not know and will never know how much you have done for us. My son, Grant (22), was overcome with emotion at seeing this. He had told me, over and over, that it was a joke or trick. My youngest two children and I have been through so much together. He was just trying to keep me from getting my hopes up. We were both happily disappointed that out cynical attitude(s) were thwarted.
My diagnosis was grim. If I do not seek chemotherapy they have given me six months to live. If I do they have stated that I have 36 months. I know that's what they say but I'm only concerned with what God says.
Before I left the hospital Sarah's father who has been my ex husband (since 2006) asked me to marry him. I have complained for many years that I didn't want to put my soul in jeopardy by living and having sex with a man to whom I was not married. Additionally, we have been living in an uncomfortable 700 square foot, 1 bedroom apartment. You see, we lost a house during the financial deluge. He has another job, a better job, but he had become so stingy and so despondent and untrusting that we were forced to live within his psyche. We are still struggling and it is a struggle for me to get him to see the value of an Ivy league education or at least the aspiration or the attempt to fulfill our child's dream. No one in his family has ever graduated from college. Your generousity and the same behaviour of other far away profs has CHANGED HIS HEART! We are to move to a very small but pleasant home some time this summer.
Instead of being haughty or dismissive I thanked him for doing me the honour of being his wife and therefore saving my soul. We have begun the beautiful practice of praying together at night. I have wanted this for so long that it is my heart's desire. To be physically and spiritually aligned with the person I share my life. It is sublime.
Thank you my friend. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
La Vonda R. Staples (soon to be Mrs. Brian L. Staples - that's how we met, we had the same name before we got married in 1997)
La Vonda R. Staples, Writer
BA Psychology 2005 and MA European History 2009
"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great; Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
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