Me and my Monkey

April 25th, 2016 No Comment yet

Spring break. No, not the Florida one. Nor the one where you and your boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/wife/friends fly to Rome for a long weekend. I’m talking about the one where your children’s school suddenly transforms in your mind from a haven to the center of all evil, having left them under the 24-hour-two-week long supervision of one person; you.

It’s only day one of official Easter vacation. And here’s a little glimpse at the state of affairs.

We have a monkey puppet. We love monkey. Monkey needs to eat with us, as in he needs his own plate of real food, watch TV with us, play with us, we show it our toys, we share, we ask him what he likes best, etc. Usually after a weekend, monkey takes a rest because the other monkey goes to school. But as today would have marked day three of me walking around with a furry extension of my hand, I decided to go to the beach.

The beach is a cold place at 9.30 am. For an adult. For a three-year-old it’s a place to run up and down the frozen waters beating against the shore, and scream “Mommy! I love the sea!” over and over again, as if he’d spent his life in a dungeon. After speed walking a good couple of kilometers, at the demand of the enthusiast, feet red and numb, I dug them into the warming sand and made sandcastles. Then collected seashells. Then got sand out of toes, provided refreshments and snacks and dreamt of monkey.

The bucket of seashells came with us for our nightly bath. He dumped them all in the water right after I washed him. Something began to smell of grilled octopus that’s gone bad. The largest seashell, the only one still intact, was oozing some sort of dark gooey stuff into the tub, crazy amounts for a shell its size. It was one of those smells that you know will stay in your nose hairs for days, maybe even prevent you from eating seafood for a while, maybe food in general.

And that’s where I am, right now, on day one of vacation, having spared you the stories of nail painting with permanent marker, the supermarket run, carwash, kiosk, and lunch.

Years ago, in early summer I overheard a woman on the beach freaking out about school being over in a week, and being stuck alone with three-year-old twins. I was appalled, immediately judged her as a bad mother.Yeah, let that be a lesson for me.

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