The Monkey

This in-person interview has been transcribed.

What is it?

This is a toy that our mom made for me when I was really little. She made it because it was very expensive and difficult to buy toys in the Soviet Union in the late 80s. And instead of standing in line for hours and then getting some sort of plastic, impersonal thing, or even not getting it at all because the store runs out, she got the materials and made this felt puppet. It’s a monkey, it actually looks like a lot of Russian children’s books’ characters. It has a sort of little pouch for a mouth that I used to be really fascinated by, and it has bangs, this monkey. I was three or so when I got it. I definitely remember the mouth of this monkey, and it probably helped me work out some fine motor skills trying to put stuff in it. And it has these long limbs.

I also have memories of playing with it, taking it out to the children’s play area and playing with it on the monkey bars and making it swing from them, which in retrospect was probably really cute.

The most important memory I have of him was also probably one of my first memories, of our immigration from Russia to Israel. I remember that it was with me in the plane — I put it in a backpack, maybe. I was holding it, I was clutching it when we got out of the plane, and we actually walked on the tarmac, from what I remember. It was a long plane flight and we got out on the tarmac and it was really hot. It was so hot. I’d never been in a climate like that before. And then we got on the bus, we were on the bus for a long time. And I kept thinking, “as long as you hold on to the monkey, you will be OK. As long as you hold on to the monkey, you will be OK.” It was like I really had to take care of the monkey.

I remember thinking that specifically when I and other kids were lifted out of the bus by screaming women who were hugging us and possibly kissing us? I’m not sure. They were an Israeli welcoming committee of screaming ladies. They took us to the cafeteria, and I think it had plastic tablecloths and plastic flowers at the center of all of these tables. And they were feeding us, as though we were hungry. Which, I guess after a long flight you probably are, but it had this feeling of “let’s feed the hungry Soviet refugees” or whatever. And I felt a bit defensive, I guess. I couldn’t have possibly as a four year old realized that it was all this class stuff and all these assumptions, going both ways obviously. But I do remember there was a lot of intense feeling that I wasn’t sharing with lots of crying and kissing and stuff like that. And I was terrified, and very focused on the monkey.

And so, I gave it a name in second grade. That was a few years already of living in Israel. I named it after the first boy that I ever liked. The monkey’s name is Shmuel.

He was in fourth grade and I was in second grade, so I had a crush on this older boy and he really ignored me a lot. Very elaborately ignored me. Including ditching me when he said he would hang out with me. So he walked with me for a while but then he saw his friends at the basketball court. And he just went over there and started playing basketball with them. And I just stood there.

You named the monkey five years after you got it. Did you refer to the monkey as Shmuel? Or The Monkey?

I think both. It was possibly named Dima, before I renamed it Shmuel. I vaguely remember thinking of it as Dima.

Is it possible that it was that boy’s Russian name? That’d be weird.

What does it represent to you?

This monkey is the oldest thing that I own. Obviously as a family we have a few important things from Russia, and a few important things from before my time including books, which are now very valuable to me because that’s my field and my work. So I’m really excited to know about those books, they weren’t on my radar when I was growing up.

But the monkey is consciously the thing that I’ve owned throughout my life. It was in my bed for a really long time. It was in the corner of the bed and I slept on the other side. And I think I moved it out because, again, of dating an older boy. I remember having people respond to this monkey in my bed. And just having to be like, Yeah, that’s the thing that’s in my bed, so fuck you.

You mentioned it was the oldest thing, why do you like it?

Well, I guess it has to do with mom. I guess it is something about a mother’s love and devotion. Obviously now I’m about to become a mom so I’m thinking about that.

If you asked me a couple years ago I probably would have said it was about how magical and special my mom made me feel. There was always lots of storytelling, and she would ask lots of questions. And I’d tell her these long-winded stories, and it felt like I had this incredible inner life. And the monkey represents her appreciation of that, I guess.

Where does it live in your home now that you’ve moved it out of your bed?

It is right across from the bed. It’s pretty much the first thing I see when I wake up.

Do you have any other memories associated with it?

I remember when I realized that it was really shabby. Obviously I never washed it, I mean it’s got wires and felt and really old pieces of clothing. It has these little pants. So I remember a couple things about the dating of it. One where I realized that it’s kind of dirty — like, a dirty thing that I owned for a really long time.

And then the other thing that I realized is that the monkey’s clothes look super 70s. And I don’t know if mom really meant it that way. She was growing up in the 70s and the 80s, but it has these bell-bottom pants, this monkey. Before it sort of existed outside of time and space as this prized object that I owned, but then I realized the specific historical references of it.

What would you feel if you lost it?

I think that I wouldn’t have feelings about it. I think that there are some kind of very strong, specific feelings that I would dissociate instead of feeling. That would be a very big loss, and I don’t know if I have the processing capacity for that. So I maybe wouldn’t even feel a whole lot. It’d just be this absence. Which would be pretty sad.