37 Elternteil by Justin Kemp „Nacheinmal bitte!“ meine Professorin commands with a flourish of her dry erase marker. Though grounded in her Deutsch Akzent, multicolored professional attire for which I don’t have the vocabulary to describe supplies her with a hint of Einstein. Fervent gesticulation forces her to pull bobbed silver-gray hair out of her face every five minutes. „Denn so sehr hat Gott die Welt geliebt,“ wir sagen, squinting or tapping our fingers as we conjure words we’ve scarcely memorized and only voiced in falters. Imagine reciting a sentence you know, except in sounds you’ve only become acquainted with over the past two and a half years. Es ist schwierig. Aber nicht so schwierig since I’ve built up some intuitive German. I fumble for the occasional Wort or pronunciation rather than for every utterance. Now the hard part is building words into grammatical sentences instead of Denglisch Frankensteins. Inevitably, our recitation of Johannes 3.16 or repetition of vocabulary after Dr. Shaver’s Deutsch-Tennessee-country accented voice evolves into a linguistic discussion. Die Professorin will „Ahhh!“ sagt when Sam, Elsie, Angela, or I ask a question beyond our studies. Heute haben wir Familie Wörter gelernt: siblings, brother, sister, parents… „Eltern ist plural, ja?“ someone fragt Dr. Shaver. „Ahhhh, good catch,“ she replies with a knowing tilt of her head, sending her hair askew again.
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