A little boy in Uganda

A friend at the New Vision was telling me about her 10-month-old. He’s one of the rambunctious ones. He can’t quite walk yet, but he can get up on chairs, and when he does, he gleefully leaps off. Mom is becoming very watchful, and a little nervous.

She had told me he is adopted, so I asked if she knew who his birth parents were, and if that was ever an issue here for adopted children. No, we’ll never know, she said. He was found in a plastic bag, abandoned in a garbage can.

He is a lucky boy, I said, to have ended up in a loving home where he can jump off of chairs. Well, the first three months were a little rough, she said. But he seems to be doing just fine now.

There’s one thing she’s not looking forward to. As he approaches his first birthday, she needs to take him to be tested for HIV. She’s not exactly putting it off, but she’s decided to wait a few more weeks until she’ll have some vacation time from work, and do it then. What happens if he does have HIV, I asked. I don’t know, she said. But my father is a pediatrician. We’ll figure it out.

It’s always there. If it’s not there as a reality, it’s there as a question mark. Even for a little boy whose first word was “No!” because that’s what he hears from his mom when he’s about to jump from the chair.