Just A Little Monkey
On an unusually warm and bright November afternoon, I took the day off and drove down to pick up Raad and his mother at their outpost in the backwoods of Athens County. Of course, when you take an infant anywhere, its like moving day. So while she was loading up my car with various baby paraphernalia and provisions for the weekend, it was my job to keep the little one happy. These days, happy means anything that doesn’t involve the abject despair of contorted, red-faced wailing. Its really quite amazing the way he can instantaneously metamorphosize from calm, phlegmatic indifference into a cataclysmic eruption of anguish and suffering without the slightest change of observable circumstance. There must be a fine line in a baby’s mind between existential terror and oblivious tranquility. Locked in a marathon dance with a schizophrenic partner, the adult is continually trying out moves to keep swinging the child back from the abyss until victoriously delivered across the finish line to angelic slumbers. When sucking on something no longer suffices, the most successful choreography involves embracing the child while orbiting the hallways of your home, or perambulating outdoors, moving with a rhythmic gait that lightly jostles your fellow traveler. This day, we found ourselves deep in the untamed fields of a peaceful countryside, following wildlife paths through a maze of tall grasses, adhesive weeds and thorny branches. I accompanied the percussive crunch of my footsteps on the dry hay with the mesmerizing repetition of a simple song that seemed to spontaneously combust from a desire to soothe a fragile temperament, sparked by the joy of sharing a sunny, intimate moment with an innocent perched in my arms.
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey climbing up a tree
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey climbing up a tree
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