Stuffed Monkeys

Was it our first Christmas together you arrived? You’ve been such a part of our home these many years I can’t remember which of us gave you to the other. Two furry brown bodies joined by Velcro paws locked in wraparound hug, androgynous except for a single pink bow on one, beatific black thread smiles grace your faces, lashed eyelids closed in your own ardor and discretion for our privacy as you sit atop his armoire.

Other stuffed animals have moved through our lives over the years: the millennial kitten with its party hat and noise maker, the camel I gave him in the hospital to “get over the hump,” the koala a friend brought back from Australia now relegated to a high bookshelf. But you are the only ones who have shared our bedroom these 40 plus years. Oh, if those tight-stitched little monkey mouths could speak! You witnessed those youthful years of passion and discovery, wept silently the occasional nights we slept back-to-back in unresolved anger, stood by in silent sympathy as we aged into those physical barriers to romance— mouth guard, carpal tunnel splint, that Darth Vader CPAP mask. You were there the months after his surgery when we learned that intimacy is different than sex, a secret you’d known since your creation.

Now in a futile attempt to slow time, our own primate bodies cling desperately to one another as they age, ache and wrinkle, reaching for one another’s familiar hand in darkness while yours, a bit dusty but unchanged, stay locked in that eternal Velcro hug.

Marianne Gambaro