I.

I don’t remember being fed in infancy — my memory doesn’t extend quite that far — but I was seven when my younger brother was born, and I vividly remember his feedings. They were quite a production. The bottles and nipples had to be washed, scrubbed with special brushes, then sterilized in a big metal pot that boiled hard on the stove, the bottles rattling on a rack inside it. The formula had to be mixed; it had to be heated, but not too hot! I can still see my mother testing it on her wrist. Then, and only then, could the baby be fed.