fala, bezerro desmamado

in my second to last area on my mission we lived in an accessory apartment behind madalena's house.  madalena was like a mom to all the missionaries in that area.  her house was the central location for all the missionaries in the zone, and we often gathered there on p-days to write letters, eat her yummy rice and beans, talk while our laundry was drying on the line out back, and read letters our zone leader delivered.  her own two children grown and gone (one serving a mission), she loved the missionaries and treated us like her own children.  she laughed with us and at us, scolded us, told us stories, shared whatever she had to feed us, let us do her dishes (but only if we knew the right way to do them), welcomed us home at night after a long day of missionary-izing.  

i recently found out she had a bad go with cancer and died last march.  i will always remember the hours spent in her kitchen.  i will always remember her hanging her hand towels to dry on the radiator behind the refrigerator.  i will always remember her dog whom we laughingly renamed "cheiroso"--he was a big, yellow dog and was the smelliest, stinkiest thing you have ever come across--worse than a big, yellow, wet dog.  i honestly don't remember his real name, but sister santos and i renamed him "cheiroso" (big smelly one), and the name stuck.  i will always remember her swatting at us with her hand towels.  i will always remember her response to our zone leader when he whined, "irmã"

 [sister]--and really, to phonetically spell it out, it sounded more like, "ear-muuuuuuh", with the whiny intonations...to this bleating she always responded, "fala, bezerro desmamado" [i remember madalena telling me "bezerro" meant baby goat, but google translates it to mean "calf"...so maybe "bezerro" is any baby animal that has four legs and bleats?...anyway, the literal translation is "speak, un-nursed calf", but has more the tone of voice of, "aww, you poor thing, tell me, what does the unfed hungry little baby calf need?"].

(all my photos are in storage, but i found this one on the computer...madalena and me, 2003, i think)

this week, max started bleating.  he follows me around like a little, lost baby calf, and bleats, in a whiny, high-pitched tone, "mommy," (phonetically it comes out more like, "mu-uuuuuh-mee".  he doesn't really want to tell me anything, and doesn't seem to need anything in particular, he just wants to stay close to my heels and bleat after me.  since running across and conversing with my old brazilian friends on fb, my mind is slipping between portuguese and english, and nearly all of the conversations i have in my head are in portuguese...so when i heard max bleating, it didn't take very long before i responded, "fala, bezerro desmamado," scooping him up in my arms for snuggles.  tadinho.