drink

I'm thinking happiness looks something like this: a little one-year old boy tearing through the door of the ward, just ahead of his mama. From the hall I can hear the sounds of worship, the voices raised high and the drums pounding. But this little one has had enough of singing and sitting still. He runs to his bed and grabs the blue plastic cup sitting on the chair next to his pillow, lifting it up to his mama, who takes it with a smile as broad as the morning. She fills it with water, hands it back to him and he drinks. After about a minute of concentrated gulping, the little one hands the cup back and runs back into the hall, heading for the sound of the drums. The mama pauses in the doorway to look back at me.

He ask to drink? I ask her almost without expecting her answer. Yes. He say he wan' drink. I am happy.

Considering that her child has been unable to swallow since drinking the caustic liquid back in May, that her child can now do what she thought he would never do again, that her child is no longer condemned to die from starvation and malnutrition, I think she has every right to be just that.