Week 10, Theme 1

Prompt: Your tutor will provide you with a sentence, without context of any kind. Use it as the first sentence of this theme. Recommendation: approach the prompt as the occasion for a free-writing exercise; take the sentence and spend twelve minutes (use your cell phone alarm) writing in response without a plan (or, a net to catch you). Then see what you have. Maybe you will be done already. Or maybe you will see a direction in which you want to revise.

I hadn’t expected this. The message from Inge had woken me a few hours earlier than I had planned; after showering, I threw on my heavy Barbour jacket, greeted the Berlin winter air, hopped on the U-Bahn at Rosenthaler Platz, and rode to Alexanderplantz. There, I caught the S-Bahn heading to Westkreuz. Sitting on the train as it passed the Reichstag, I looked at my phone again. Peter: komm doch gleich. Greta ist die Geburt eines Sohnes. Es gibt ein Problem.

“Peter: come immediately. Greta is giving birth to a son. There’s a problem.” I thought: what could be wrong? The preparations had been in place for weeks now. Yes, it had been a high-risk situation, but Greta had been presenting well in recent days and all seemed as if it was proceeding normally. We had all put so much into Greta; this birth was going to make us famous. After all, such a complicated procedure, such a special circumstance…

Lost in my visions of recognition and fame, I almost missed my stop. The speakers screamed: “Zoologisher Garten!” I rushed out of the train just as the doors were closing.

As I ran through the gates and to the polar bear enclosure, the din grew louder and louder. Hitting the boundary of the space just as the weak December sun peaked over the rock formation lining Greta’s living space, I saw the mother bear staring at a ball of fur ten feet away from her. Inge ran to me. Peter, du bist die einzige Person, die helfen kann!

“Peter, you’re the only person who can help.” I knew. I leaped over the railing and ran between Greta and her son. I had been Greta’s keeper for years; she didn’t attack. Instead, our eyes met for what seemed like seconds. The big brown circles looked at me with sadness before the bear turned and retreated to the rocks.

I looked at my new son. I’ll call you Knut.

~~~

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_the_Bear