follow milk

Written by Cathoel Jorss, published 6 years ago

I learned a poetic new German word just now at the little health food shop. The man behind me had put just one item on the counter, a carton of Folgemilch. I asked him, “What is… follow milk?”

“Well,” he began, and something about his tired, slightly harassed, but ever willing to be helpful expression and messy hair struck me with insight.

“Is it… what you eat when you are done with drinking only milk?”

I didn’t know how to say ‘breast milk’ let alone ‘solid food’ so I just said, only milk.

“Exactly!” he said, and then used that pricelessly dear word Germans have for breastfeeding infants. “It’s for sucklings.”

We both shifted our stuff along the counter as the person in front moved on.

“So can you use it for other things, in general, like… I’m just having a beer as a followlunch?” I asked, hopefully.

His brow clotted. “No. No, that is not right.”

Learning German. It’s one-third flights of folk poetry, two-thirds ‘that is not right’ and ‘we simply don’t do it that way.’