Soft

Does one pick up a baby when it’s crying?

As a childless woman, I have had an observer’s view of the anguish mothers feel as they ask this question, and as they question their choices.  One mother with a grown son said her grandmother had warned her not to pick up her son when he cried in the crib.  “You’ll make him soft,” the grandmother said.  By letting him cry, uncomforted, the mother feared she had actually made him hard.

In The Other, David Guterson’s work of fiction, a mother’s decision to allow her son to cry has harrowing results.

My cat was turned into the Humane Society as a stray after a hurricane and spent six weeks unclaimed in a cage before I adopted her. 

John Havran, the man who cares for her when we are out of town, noted that my cat's eyes are different colors.  It’s a trait of cats with viral infections as kittens.

She finds kitchen cupboards with doors that swing closed and safe harbors herself within them.

My cat cries in her sleep.

If I pick her up, will I make her soft?