he last few days have been hard in the cottage. S has rapidly gone blind in one eye, and the other is not doing so good either. he's been spending most of his time in bed, trying to shut out noise of the other dozen kids. last night, before dinner, he started weeping. he sobbed right through dinner and past it. until he finally tired himself out. i made him a peanut butter sandwich, and he wanted another one, and i felt bad because i had run out of peanut butter. i told sister julie about the last few days, and so this morning, he finally went to the hospital. i think all that really happened was that they changed his medication, because they think that perhaps some combination of his AIDS medication is making him blind.

and monene's left side of the face is all banged up. first he busts his eyebrow open from a swing, and then his eye right below it got the worst infection yesterday. so this afternoon, we finally slapped an eye patch on it because it was just getting to be ugly. and he cried and wailed this afternoon because of the pain.

more than half the kids in my cottage has an eye infection of some sort. some of the kids' eyes look really pretty changed. the pupils and the irises are all warped. but S's blindness is the toughest. I can tell it's hurting him a lot, physically and emotionally. He just doesn't have the energy to do anything anymore, and barely speaks nowadays.

sometimes i feel like i have no idea how to relate to a 11 year old boy. i can't tell when they want to be left alone and when they need me. all i want to do is hug him and cry and cry. but i think that is the worst thing i can do with an 11 year old boy. so i just hold it and cry in my room alone and make peanut butter sandwiches.


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