|
Rod and I were trying to
make a decision regarding which direction we should go and what we should
do next to help Rhonda..
“We’ve exhausted all our
volunteers and finances. I’m sure living in this little, what one lady
with a doctorate called “quaint,” house gives us little reputation for
being successful. We’ve lost all my shabby furniture we had in the
bankruptcy, even my sewing machine.” I was sad.
“Yes, but look how well
Rhonda is doing. She’s healthy, sleeping all night without waking in pain
and she can read. Maybe not by the standards of the world around us are we
accomplished in anything but in our own mind we know what has been done.”
Rodney was trying to
encourage me and he had to do so many times through the years.
“I’ve been told there is a
new, young teacher with a class for children who are disadvantaged in one
way or another. They meet in the old Washington school building. I’m going
to take Rhonda up there tomorrow.”
The old building was all
the young woman had been able to retrieve for her students no one else
wanted to teach. It was obvious that there were needed repairs and for
part of her time the teacher had to take her class up a flight of stairs.
This woman was refreshingly healthy looking. She had a complexion that
spoke of clean living and fresh outdoor exercise.
I brought Rhonda’s books so
I could show the teacher how she had learned to read. The books were
battered and worn from Rhonda trying to turn pages with her crippled
fingers.
“Nose is nose, and toes are
toes but nose is not toes,” Rhonda read with confidence.
Of course, for the teacher,
it couldn’t be known what had gone into getting Rhonda to this point but
somehow the young woman was touched by the efforts of this little girl who
read so carefully the book that showed how hard she had worked at it.
Rhonda’s little hands were just beginning to become somewhat twisted but
already she had learned to make her right hand work for her to some
extent. The light chair I used for her was more like an upright
wheelbarrow which leaned backward as I pushed her. The two large wheels on
the back was what carried the chair. The front of it was simply a bar on
the ground. Rhonda and her chair was a thing of interest to the other
children and they gathered around her when their teacher told them to come
introduce themselves.
Rhonda had been accepted
into the little class of sweet, gentle children whose only problem was
visited on them by some strange happenstance due to no choice of their
own. |
