Senhora, Your Baby Is Freezing To Death

In Brazil it is very common for total strangers to advise you that your child is dying of discomfort, hunger, or some other woeful act of motherly negligence. And top on the list of the Brazilian busy-body's preoccupations is whether or not your child is cold.

Most conversations of this kind start with lavish praise for your infant: "What a cutie", "The most beautiful thing in the world", "Is it your first?". You nod and smile with pride. Then, "He needs socks on!"

Usually, it isn't malicious. It derives from a very sincere adoration and concern that Brazilians have for children. (In what other country could you take a toddler to a smart restaurant for dinner and let him wander the floor chatting to all the other diners without generating a single bad vibe?)

Sometimes however, it oversteps the mark. On one 18 degree day, a man informed me that the supermarket vegetable aisle was not the place for my poor cold baby. (Said baby was fully clothed, socks aside, and gurgling.) I politely replied 'I think he's OK' and inched the pushchair closer to the overpriced imported grapes. At this point the man started screaming at me in disgust. He had been a pediatrician for 20 years and apparently had never witnessed such irresponsible parenting.

My stock reply in such situation is "In Scotland, where I come from, this temperature would be mid-summer", for in all cold-related arguments I claim to come from Scotland. Gives me the upper hand, don't you agree?

I remember going to Portobello beach in Edinburgh as a schoolgirl, and having to dig a massive trough for us all to lie in so that our goosebumps wouldn't get windburn. I also remember we ate a lot of ice cream. My Scottish grandmother had a freezer-full of the stuff, and famously boasted that she had never knowingly turned one down in her life. All those Scottish Italian ice-cream families, with successful businesses despite the cold climate.

In my opinion, there is no circumstance which disqualifies a day from the ice-cream or lolly-consuming calendar. Here in Brazil, you do not eat ice cream, let alone go out to the park, if it rains. You certainly do not eat ice cream if you have a cold for you will surely catch pneumonia and probably die. You don't give your children iced drinks or let them hang around the house naked or let them swim in months without 'r' in the name, all for the same reason. I have witnessed more cross-cultural couples bickering over these matters than anything else.

It's winter here at the moment, around 23-degrees in the afternoon. People here are donning their novelty jumpers and gloves. My children are still going to the beach to play in the sand, drinking apple juice on the rocks and watching TV in their birthday suits. (No matter how hard I try, my 3 year old Little Bear will not keep his clothes on).

The weekend before last I let them swim in a pool. Admittedly, they were in wetsuits, but still, it was cold.

On the Monday, Little Bear got a temperature. By Tuesday it was really high. He didn't go to school for the whole week. On Saturday he was diagnosed at the hospital with bronchial pneumonia, and I'm wondering if maybe the Brazilians know something after all.

He didn't eat for 5 days, the poor little mite. Finally, today he got his appetite back, and what did he want? An Ice Lolly. And did he get it? Of course he did. Just don't tell anyone.