Her Bear

We were on our way to Berlin Zoo to see her black bear again. Since we moved here last year our youngest girl Alix has become very attached to this black bear. Unhealthily attached my wife insists. Her thing for that bear, my wife says, isn’t good. Alix has fostered a dangerous dependency. Dangerous, because think, she points out, what this animal would do, given half a chance? She says Alix doesn’t see a black bear. She sees an animal filling whatever hole leaving home still groans. Her black bear’s big enough to fill this hole for now. Won’t he outgrow the hole? Or as the hole closes, as it must, leaving him struggling for space, what happens then to my little girl? Seeing Alix mimicking her bear bobbing and tearing about childishly, my thoughts are simply: she’s a child who’s happy, being happy with her black bear pal.

We were going to Berlin Zoo on the U-Bahn when I first heard Alix speak German. A man sat on the floor in the aisle grumbling to himself, being angry at his cracked hands. Waiting by the doors Alix said something to him in German just before we got off at Berlin Zoologischer Garten and he laughed. She won’t tell me what she said. When I asked her who she’d heard it from, she said it’s a thing her black bear likes to say when he’s in a funny mood. Black bears have funny moods? She said sometimes he can’t help seeing the funny side.

All I see in Alix’s drawings are precociously rendered fur and scenes of the black bear in amusingly human situations: drinking coffee at a dirty café counter, staring at itself sadly as a clown in a dressing room mirror smoking, with a stethoscope listening to a child’s chest. My wife sees preteen troubles. I told Alix build your art muscles by drawing other animals too, like, what about a polar bear? Baboon? What job would you give a baboon? She said soldier. I said prison guard. She paused at the flamingos we usually ignored after the elephants, thinking this question over. Well, she said, whatever it does, the baboon shouldn’t feel he’s got to stick it out if it’s not his thing.

We were on our way to Berlin Zoo and my wife came along, because it was Alix’s birthday. All she’d asked for was to spend that afternoon at the zoo and later Italian food. On the U-Bahn we sat either side of Alix, talking about precious years and her being amazingly eleven. My wife looked at me over Alix’s head but I didn’t want to know right now. Alix let us lead her the long way round the zoo without complaining, we stopped to watch the penguins being fed, crouched by the hippo glass, didn’t rush past the flamingos either. It was a sunny day. Altogether it was a wonderful day. After dinner we went home. Alix slept with her new cuddly polar bear my wife picked at the gift shop.

We are going to Berlin Zoo today. If I don’t take Alix to see her black bear I’m afraid of what he’ll do. How much he’ll hurt her struggling outwards and stretching his elbows and feet to be free. Would he claw my child’s heart, beating too fast, because she’s not known pain like this before? What does a dad call his child who’s an adult bear-sized hole? What can a dad say to his daughter who’s an adult bear-sized hole? We are going again to see the black bear at Berlin Zoo today and next Saturday and Sunday too, because I can’t. Just can’t answer.