The Portuguese have a saying:”Tudo o que é pequeno tem graça.” Loosely translated, it means that all things that are small are cute. Along with all the fun that we had with the campers, the bakery that made our Mafra bread had a six-week old litter of kittens. Our Samantha cat when we were first married did not survive our first furlough. The bakers offered us one of the kittens. I argued that it was too young, but they said something like, “Now or never.”
We named her Fofinha (Fluffy) and she came to live with us. We soon discovered that she was ill named. Oh, her fur was soft and fluffy, but she was a wild child. Or kitten if you prefer. I had to feed her with canned milk from a medicine dropper. I had to learn to keep her clean as her mother did (I didn’t wash her with my tongue, though, I used a wash cloth.) Eventually, I gave her the pureed soup that I fed to Susie. While Fofinha was still small, I made a sling for her so I could hold her and keep her warm.
Fofinha grew and thrived. Eventually, she decided that squatting over the bathtub drain was more sanitary than the litter box. She employed the litter box for the solid waste.
Susie was also thriving. I had patterned my feeding “schedule” from the information I had received from La Leche. They encouraged mothers to “feed on demand.” So, when Susie whimpered at night, I picked her up and nursed her. I figured that she would get over it eventually.
One night, Susie cried in the night and was inconsolable. I got up and checked her over, and I found a lump on the side of her neck. The only sleep I got that night was when I held her close to me. In the morning we called the pediatrician. The doctor said to bring her right in to the hospital.
Susie had an abscess. The doctor said she was going to lance it. I immediately took Bethy with me into an examining room some distance away from where I closed the door and started to tell her stories. It wasn’t enough to keep the outraged screams. We went home with an antibiotic, and Susie recovered soon (except for the scar that she still has). Except mine. No one had told me that mothers feel the pain that their children suffer.
The Portugal Years 