Stefanie is our new German tutor. She lives 30 minutes away, but it isn’t a freeway drive, so that is nice. Instead we drive by farmer’s markets, over train tracks and under huge trees that have been trimmed for years away from the power lines so now they lean precariously over the road. For the last three weeks we’ve been listening to a book on CD entitled Stowaway. Sometimes when we arrive I’m wiping the tears from my eyes.
On the first day when I asked Elisabeth if I should stay in the room with her she gave me a little push and said, “Mom, I’ve been to school.” Her session went by quickly and easily and I thought, “Wow! She knows a lot of German.” Perhaps it is all about context--now that we are here, it seems like more. Or perhaps I never gave her enough credit over there. In any case, she is used to using her German in an academic context, so this works well for her.
Henry’s sessions are a little bit more like a taffy pull. Stefanie will talk to him in German, and he just won’t answer. He’ll get all giggly, perhaps, but it is hard to get him to talk. He has never learned German this way before. He learned it because he had to survive Kindergarten. His teachers in Kindergarten may have asked him questions, and maybe he answered them, maybe he didn’t. But the real learning came from the kids around him. And eventually it was fun. I think he misses that. Lately Stefanie, Henry and I play a board game together, coaxing out the German as we go along.
But last week, we had an extra treat. A German-speaking neighbor of the tutor came over, along with her 3 girls, so the 5 kids plus the tutor’s daughter had a good and loud romp for an hour and a half, consisting of a decent mix of German and English. On the way home I heard Henry “reading” or talking to himself in German. I was jubilant. But I kept it to myself: We’ve passed a hurdle! See what 2 hours can do?
Two days later, I wrote on our homeschool schedule “German,” intending that we would play a game together and only speak German. We had done this together before, once or twice, with mixed results, but I was determined to keep trying. Henry picked out the game, and it was one that Elisabeth hadn’t played yet. I started by explaining it to her in German. She was very shortly in tears. So I explained it in English, and we got started. Henry would say, “Okay, I roll first.” And I would say, “Ja, okay, du würflst.” “Five!” shouts Henry. “Nicht vergessen!” I say. “Fünf.” He does know those words--it is true. But they just weren’t flowing out. Then he tried to explain to Elisabeth how you put the cards together, and I tried to help him with the sentence, “Du nimmst . . .” He vaguely repeated what I said, and then, with a pained and pathetic look that will stay imprinted on my mind, he said, “Mama! I can’t do it!”
I can’t remember what we did then. Maybe I said we could play it in English, but frankly it isn’t a game I really enjoy (you know those games). So after a few more turns I said, “Forget it. We’re going to read a book.”
I looked at our selection of German books and chose one that I had gotten Henry for his birthday, but hadn’t read to him yet: Kasimir Backt or Kasimir Bakes (see, you can figure out some German). It was actually originally written in Swedish by Lars Klinting, but our first exposure to Kasimir was in a German book we borrowed from Bettina’s girls, so it just seemed authentic enough to me. I started reading and was relieved at how easy it was. It felt so nice and comforting, after our game fiasco. Elisabeth was all huffy and grumpy, but I ignored her. I was going to enjoy this book, no matter what.
It is Kasimir’s birthday. A friend comes and brings him flowers, so he wants to thank his friend, who is obviously hungry. So Kasimir and his friend Frippe bake a cake together. “Wir backen einen Kuchen!” The rest of the book is the simple step by step process of baking a cake. German style (or, okay, Swedish, but it seems close enough to German for me). He uses a brush to spread melted butter around the bottom of the pan (Kuchenform) and then sprinkles bread crumbs on that. They mix up the batter and “Kasimir verrührt alles zu einem glatten Teig”--Teig, batter, a word I will always associate with Bettina translating the back of a cake mix for me. When the cake goes in the oven, Kasimir and Frippe sit in front of the oven to watch it, “Genau wie im Fernsehen”--just like watching t.v. I cannot describe the cuteness of the picture.
But the page that got to me, all the way down to that homesick place, was after they had taken the cake out of the oven. Frippe gets a piece of “Tortenpapier” --cake paper -- such a German standard--a large doily, but not like a doily, not as lacy. He puts that on top of the cake, and then a plate on top of that, and then Kasimir inverts the cake onto the plate: Simsalabim! Guck mal, wie schön der Kuchen geworden ist.
Now, Leider, unfortunately I have not been brave enough to make a Kuchen following a German recipe. But I have been fortunate enough to taste many made from scratch by dear friends. So Friday afternoon, lying on my tummy on the thick carpet of the game room floor, reading to my kids, I was transported back across the ocean to friends’ tables and to their kitchens and mine and to the nearby bakery and I cried. I couldn’t stop it. I told the kids I needed to cry. And I did.
Thankfully, not five minutes later, John came home. And he let me cry a little more.
Henry may forget his German. Elisabeth may decide she’s not interested in studying it anymore. But we’ve still been changed.
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(oh, and my German? I was trying to do Rosetta Stone but my headset isn’t working. Oops. But I do at least speak only German to the tutor.)
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