fuenf neun scaling the alps

“She is hungry!” Said the woman from Africa who was holding my bawling second born while I desperately attempted to stuff a wonderful pile of spicy fish and polenta into my mouth with one hand and select a new game on my phone for my attention-deficient first born with the other. “You must feed her fufu and okra!” She continued in what would have been all caps if it were an SMS message, though I have a sneaking suspicion she prefers old-fashioned phone calls to text. “You call me! I will make it for you!” There were other voices chastizing me, too–quieter ones from refined Austrian mothers–for forgetting to bring Serafina’s pacifier, but these were drowned out by the woman and the baby.

I raised the corners of my lips in what I hoped was a noncommittal smile. There really is no arguing with some people, and as an “oldschool mother,” this woman falls into that category. Even if it were possible in the pigeon German/English/grandiose hand gestures we were using to communicate to enumerate the various studies that have found exclusive breastfeeding (i.e. no fufu and okra) for babies under six months old to be the gold standard in infant nutrition or to cite the expertise of the kids’ playfully sarcastic pediatrician, I just don’t think I’d have a shot at being heard.

I mean, how many babies has science raised? This woman has raised at least two that I know of, one of whom I’ve met–and she’s a lovely, bright and charismatic human being–plus has undoubtedly assisted in the raising of numerous others one way or another. I imagined my debate attempts being met with the derision of an expert or worse: the “you’re going to kill your child” look.  I looked to the members of the room whose German abilities far surpass my own and whose relationships with this “mama” are far deeper than mine, but they were all busy doing the weird Austrian “ignoring thing” that seems to be synonymous with politeness around here and left me dangling with no idea as to how I ought to react.

And then there was another part of me that really desperately wanted to take “oldschool mother’s” advice, to partake in a tradition that has possibly been handed down from mother to daughter for centuries, to have my three month old baby’s first taste of real food to be okra and fufu, to delight as it transforms her screams into sleepy, stuffed coos, her irregular growth curves into the steep upward trajectory of the ideal “fat baby”–the gold standard for babies outside the U.S. and Europe. Nor do I want to upset a woman who is a source of two rarities in my life in Austria: interesting conversation and succulent food from somewhere other than Austria.

Meanwhile my daughter, still cradled in the arms of this lovely woman who possesses more maternal instinct than I do in my entire body, was infusing her screeching with so much passion, she quickly cycled through various shades of violet. My son whined in his piteous fervor for another game. And I just kept on smiling like an idiot.