Fierce Creatures

The first attack happened when I was four and my sister AJ was 3.

My memories are hazy of course but my parents were both there as was my third sister T who was only a baby.

In Penang, circa 1972, one of the big attractions was the Botanic Gardens. Tribes (Mobs? Schools? Flocks?) of smallish hairy grey monkeys with thin red hands and beady eyes roamed openly around this pleasant expanse of parklands.

They were free to chitter and play and caper in the trees and simply do what small grey monkeys do best which is to steal food, masturbate and spread disease.

How we clapped and laughed at their antics.

On this day, as part of the family outing, our parents had endowed us with little bags of hard dry peanuts with which to tempt our hairy playfellows into providing still more simian tricks.

My four year old fist stuffed with peanuts, I felt heady with the power of largesse.
I have the peanut bag. All monkeys must love and adore me.
I dispensed them sparingly, not wanting to over value their talents and spoil them for the future.

Was that a cartwheel?
Here have a peanut.

Pulling your mate’s tail and causing an earpiercing screech?
Two peanuts for you my friend.

Leaping five feet towards me and baring your fangs in an unpleasant manner?
Take the bag, I want my Mummy.

My sister AJ was not so fast. A second monkey followed in the wake of the first and jumped up, biting her on the face. That was the end of that little outing. My mother, with T in her arms, was furious. She complained bitterly to the gatekeepers on our way to the hospital. They were stoic.

These are the Monkey Gardens. Those are the Monkeys.
Can you identify the Monkey who bit your child?

She could not.

Eight years later we were back in the Monkey Gardens. This time, there was a new babe-in-pram, K. As we walked, we remembered the attack on AJ years ago. We laughed gaily as we described how terrifying it had been.

Actually I didn’t laugh quite as gaily as all that – those monkeys really were scary.

As a girl guide I had experienced the unique trauma of a “Monkey raid” during a camping holiday. Along with reef knots, splints and square lashings we were taught that there is no negotiation with monkeys. If they were brazen enough to enter our tents we were to let them take whatever took their fancy. There would be no heroes. Many a can of Impulse Body Spray and jar of instant coffee were lost on that camp.

AJ was holding a bag of peanuts and walking in the midst of our family group when the inevitable happened. A large grey monkey came swooping out of the trees to our left and heading straight for AJ it leapt up and bit her hand, causing her to scream and drop the peanut bag.

This time my mother was not so slow.

Dropping the handles of the stroller she rushed at the monkey, armed with her batik handbag and shouting like a maniac, she walloped it hard across the head. Stunned, the monkey turned a backward somersault and then disappeared back into the trees.

At the time I was full of admiration for my mother’s courage and jealous that it wasn’t me who caused her outburst. Now I realize of course that it was simply another illustration of Nature at work. Just as the monkey saw food in the peanut bag clutched in my sister’s sweaty palm and attacked for it, my mother saw her offspring under threat and attacked in response.

Mothers can be fierce creatures.

This week I learned that the last of my friends in the tight knit uni group has had her baby boy. Looking back through my blog I found where I had written about discovering she was pregnant, the irony of her saying to me a year or so earlier: Let’s you and I not have babies for a few years. Let’s wait until we’re 39. Meanwhile AJ has let my family know about Impending Number 4 and another friend is home from hospital with her baby girl.

Infertility also has many fierce creatures, so many scrabbling chittering reasons why my transfer didn’t work, why maybe the Frozen Embryo Transfer we’ll attempt in November won’t work, why maybe none of this crap, Chinese Fertility Goddess included, will ever work.

Can you identify the Monkey who bit your child?

No.

Time seems to flow effortlessly around us, our friends and family grow and procreate and produce.

Somewhere in that fuzzy grey crowd of beady eyes and reddened hands, there might be the reason why C and I aren’t parents. But we can’t pick it out.

Instead we stand side by side, getting older, getting tireder. We're chucking peanuts while the rest of our life seems to walk on by.