IT'S RAINING IN MY MONKEY VIDEO

 Say what? What is this woman on about? And what are monkey videos anyway?

    About a year ago I chanced on a FB site of monkey reels. Feeling a bit scattered--a common occurrence for which I blame D. Trump and all of the satanic GOP--I clicked on one of the reels. It was horrifying. Purple babies being born out of the back end of female monkeys who put their hands around to catch the baby. Then yellow amniotic fluid gushed out, along with the purple placenta.     ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Then the very wet newborn being held by Mama and licked clean. They bite the umbilical cord.

 

 

     I had to go make a very strong cup of Earl Grey tea 

 

 

and eat one of my GF low-FODMAP chocolate chip cookies to recover. If I drank in the morning, I would have imbibed. If I liked smoking weed, I would have lit up my pipe from Chemo. I breathed deeply, as prescribed by the famous eccentric Wim Hof (check it out on Google, it really works for controlling anxiety), looked at my cookbooks, thought about making homemade cashew queso, and tried again. I am nothing if not brave. And persistent. Jan Richardson, the marvelous spiritual leader, poet and artist, spoke of "holy persistence." I like that.

  The new reel showed a completely adorable small pigtail monkey nursing at his mother's teats.

 (Did you know some teats are blue and some are pink? Neither did I.) My heart slowed. My breathing became regulated. This. Just this. A mama and a baby together as God intended them to be. New life and a nourishing mama.

  I was hooked. I am embarrassed to admit that I probably spend about a half-hour looking at monkey reels. Here's the thing: they have back-stories, narratives, tragedies, death and birth, communities, friendships, and Mamas batting their juveniles away from their teats because it is time to wean them. I have seen brutal monkey battles between pigtails and long tails. I just saw a battered, wounded monkey held by his Mama,

comforted by her warm arms. Just like a human. I find the newborns especially wonderful, reminding me of the glorious moments when I held my own two babies, wet and fresh from the womb. Is anything more miraculous than this?

  The title of this blog comes from today as I watched Tia nursing from her mom, Tara. It was raining, making an odd sound. "What is that sound?" Rick asked from his chair. "It's raining on my monkey video," I replied, grinning.

 

 So, as it rained and Tia's cheeks dented in and out as she sucked on Tara's teats, Rick and I became part of the monkey reels, their narratives, and their lives so much like our human ones as the rain came softly down in the monkey sanctuary of Cambodia.