Why my children cuss in German.
A brief defense of a bad habit, and why the stories we tell matter.
My parents got married in 1975. A year later, my dad was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army and the newlyweds soon moved to Germany, where they were stationed for four years. They have great pictures from those years — my dad with his handlebar mustache and my mom with her high-waisted jeans, dark hair grown way down her back and parted down the middle. They rode on trains and smoked cigarettes, and once, my mom crossed over into East Berlin to view the empty grocery store shelves, a product of the city’s bifurcated economic systems: One half Capitalism, the other half Communism. They went skiing in Italy, too. Sleek North Face jackets weren’t destined for me: years later, I borrowed her kelly green bell-bottomed snowsuit from the ‘70s because it was the only one we had in the house.
During the four years they lived in Germany, my mother learned to speak conversational German. But by the time I came around, most of my mother’s German language skills had faded, save for of few tenacious phrases. The first, which we heard almost constantly around our home went something like this:
“Dumm geboren, nichts was du gelernt.”
She’d say it picking up our socks off the floor, or pouring a half-finished long-forgotten Diet Cokes down the drain, or shutting the refrigerator door someone had left open. She’d say it to our dog Dottie — cleaning her muddy paw prints, or shooing her off the furniture. The strange pronouncement would fly from her lips — pernicious and equally playful — and though I didn’t know what it meant at first, I could tell by her inflection that it wasn’t a blessing.
“Dumm geboren, nichts was du gelernt means, “Born dumb, never learned a new thing.” Often, my my mom would utter an equally effective, albeit more abbreviated version: Dumm geboren. The other echo from the 1970s we heard sometimes around our home was the German word “Scheisse” pronounced shi-za. It means exactly what you think it means.
Fast forward more than fifty years, and now I’m the mother who stubs her toe, and inadvertently exclaims, “Scheisse!” in front of her children without thinking. The beauty of cussing in another language that you never learned is that you really don’t even know what you’re saying. It might as well be gibberish. Imagine my surprise, when — not long ago — my six year old dropped a Lego and said, clear as day: “Scheisse.”
I just sat there, stunned. Laughing.
We are a product of our history. But it’s more than that. We’re a product of our parents’ histories, and our grandparents’ histories too. The language and stories and experiences that Laura and Bee Carltons accumulated in the late 1970s have infiltrated the very topsoil of our lives, blooming into the fruit of our family tree — to the second and third generation.
As we careen toward Christmas, I am trying (trying!) to pause, slow down, and consider the stories I’m telling our children. It’s important what stories we read, what content we consume. Practically speaking, the very language that comes out of my mouth will one day come out of my children’s mouths, and perhaps out of the mouths of my future grandchildren, too.
If the stories we tell them matter this much — then it is all the more important to curate the content I consume. Yesterday, for example, I caught myself halfway through watching a video on Instagram of a girl I do not know putting on makeup to transform herself into Ursula from The Little Mermaid, while lip-syncing along to to villain’s theme song: “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”
What am I doing? I thought, in the moment.
Why am I wasting my life on this… schiesse?
I’m Teaching a Class in 2024!
The workshop is called The Bible As Literature, and will take place in person for four weeks, February 13 - March 5 from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. at the Porch, in Nashville. In this four-week workshop, we will read passages from Genesis, Ruth, Jonah, and the Gospel of John, paired with excerpts from writers such as John Steinbeck, Min Jin Lee, James Baldwin, and Marilyn Robinson, letting the themes, questions, and strategies instruct our own writing practice. Each week, we will generate new work and discuss those pieces together.
I would LOVE for you join! Space is limited. Register before December 11th, you can get 10% off using the code SPRING4WORDS.
Recent Favorites
LISTEN— Tish Harrison Warren is Making Christmas Weird Again. The Habit Podcast with Jonathan Rogers is one of my favorites on the internet, and this week’s episode was no exception. Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest and writer — we had the great opportunity to learn from her this summer while at Laity Lodge Family Camp. On this episode, she and Jonathan talk about Christmas, Advent, and the perils of writing.
WATCH — Lessons in Chemistry (Apple Plus). When I first read Bonnie Garmus’ breakout literary hit, Lessons in Chemistry several years ago, I wasn’t sure I really understood what all the fuss was about. But now I get it. The television adaptation (comprised of eight 1-hour episodes) hits all the right notes — balancing the questions of doubt and faith, science and religion, chance and predestination that the book attempted to cover. Well done to executive producers Lee Eisenberg, Brie Larson, Susannah Grant and Jason Bateman.
READ — The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. Full Disclosure — I actually haven’t read this book because it comes out tomorrow. But I can’t wait to get my hands on it! Ariel Lawhon is a historical fiction writer of the highest order, and this novel— her sixth! — is poised to be no exception. She will be at Parnassus tomorrow, December 5th, at 6:30 p.m. if you’d like to hear all about the formation of this story in person.
One More Thing…
The stories we read, consume and share matter. And that is why I am so grateful that you are here with me, in this little corner of the internet. I hope the stories I write and publish bring a bit of light to your week. I hope what I share leads you to roll your shoulders back, and walk with more boldness and thoughtfulness through your day. I am looking forward to the new year — connecting with new readers — and helping more writers too. I am taking on a small cohort of writers to help with their personal projects. If you have a project you’d like my help tackling, reply to this e-mail and we can discuss!
I (very) occasionally slip a “scheisse” or “merde” into my speech and it’s coming back to bite me a bit in this season of life with the kids. But it’s such a great point of what gets passed down, even small things, so easily!