A few days ago, we held a family gathering to celebrate the promotion of a friend's son to judge. The young man is quite young, not yet forty, but since graduating as a lawyer fifteen years ago, he hasn't stopped studying. I'm sure that with his promotion to the city's juvenile court judge, the community has gained someone who knows his craft.
I spent a good part of the meeting talking to him about the nature of his work, in fact I was very curious to know what were the most frequent problems he had in his day to day life.
He told me that one of the main issues he is currently facing is resolving child custody problems. With the strong migration that we have had in the country, many children are left in the care of relatives and friends, which causes them various legal problems to enroll in schools, qualify for scholarships or social assistance and situations related to the welfare of the child. They have had to establish temporary guardianships to solve emergency cases.
Another part of the court's work is to resolve adoption issues, a process that can be very lengthy. When I asked her why the process took so long, she told me that it was to protect the child. She let me know that there is a large "child selling" industry, just like that, no frills. There are unscrupulous people who adopt a child and then find a way to smuggle them out of the country to give them to strangers.
I was very surprised to hear him talk about it. I had not really thought it was a relevant problem in my country, but there are too many things that one does not know...
Throughout the conversation he told me many touching stories. Children of criminals who have seen their parents murdered in their presence. Children who at birth are left abandoned in public spaces. All of them are kept, sometimes for many years, in state-funded care homes until they can be placed for adoption.
As always, there are those who have different fates. My friend the judge told me about the case of a boy who played baseball, the son of a delinquent. The father may have wanted his son not to follow the same path as him and so he took him to baseball lessons.
One afternoon, after the end of practice, the boy's father was taken away on a motorcycle and was never heard from again. That afternoon the baseball coach decided to take the boy home, he knew that the boy's mother had serious drug problems. From that moment on, the coach began a long process until he was able to adopt the boy. Today the boy is a great baseball player with a good chance of being signed by major league teams in the USA.
I must admit that that long conversation affected my mood and left me thinking for a long time.
Most of our lives we don't take the time to think that there are children going through these difficult situations, everyone is going about their own business trying to solve their own problems. We also often think that our problems may be bigger than others, when in fact they are not.
When I heard these stories, I thought of myself, who had the good fortune of having a family where I could be with my parents and siblings, where I received education and protection. I also thought of my children and granddaughters, who have been able to have a family to care for them and guide them.
Listening to these stories made me want to thank life for everything it has given me. The truth is that I have been a lucky man.
Thank you for your time.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).
Logo creado por @themanualbot
