TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT, Pa. - I have unexpectedly spent the last several weeks with my mother in the hospital. She suffered from a brain aneurism, but she is on the long slow road to recovery.
In addition to rehabilitation therapy, one of the many things we have been doing to assist in her recovery is reading. At first, I was reading to her, but she is now reading some to me as well.
One of the things that I read to her was a collection of short stories about life in south Georgia and north Florida, near where my mother grew up. The thrilling thing about this collection of stories is that this was the first thing with which my mother actually interacted with laughter.
The story my mother talked about most is called The Monkeys Not Seen.
Bailey's grandfather was not very good at communicating with his sister, though she wrote to him regularly. The sister longed for news from home and of the family, but her brother rarely responded to her requests for news. She became so annoyed that she sent him a live monkey in the mail knowing that he hated monkeys.
Communication between the brother and sister, nonetheless, did not improve. However, the brother learned to like the monkey as he cared for his newly acquired pet.
Bailey's grandfather heard of a little boy who was passionate to see a live monkey. The boy lived in a primitive fishing village on the north Florida coast where villagers knew very little of the outside world.
Bailey's grandfather drove there in his Model A Ford to take the boy back to his home to visit the monkey. The boy sat in the rumble seat of the Model A, mesmerized by all the sites around him as the two travelled through the countryside. When the travelers reached Tallahassee, the boy spotted a bicycle and became so overwhelmed by all he was seeing that he threw up all over the rumble seat, suffering severely from motion sickness. Their journey was cut short, and the boy had to return home before he was able to see the monkey.
For years the boy told everyone who would listen of the monkey that he almost saw and the journey that he almost made. In his mind, the boy imagined a glorious creature that no doubt had well-groomed, shimmering fur, a tail that could do anything, a twinkle in its eye and an intelligent hand that reached out to the boy. The monkey, in reality, was scruffy and irritable, with a dull gaze that peered out into a world where it was not at home.
The author concludes the story, "The very best and finest monkeys, the monkeys that bring you the purest joy-those are the monkeys you must never see."
Personally, I don't like "monkeys" or dreams that I have not experienced except in my own thoughts.
I asked my mother what she thought about the story. She said that there should be more communication. As we sat in her hospital room, I wondered what communication had to do with the moral of this story.
I think that this is what she meant: How true to life this story is. We all have dreams and desires and perhaps think that the grass is greener on the other side. Our dreams almost become reality; but somehow in the twists and turns of life they don't materialize.
Surprisingly, the disappointment fades, and we are left with narratives that are much more wonderful than the reality could have ever been. Perhaps, we should learn more about how to communicate those stories because we need to keep hope and dreams alive, especially when we come to those places in life where it is difficult to maintain the vibrancy of hope.
At one point in my mother's illness, she seemed to be fading away from us and our hopes for her were wavering at that moment.
As I reflected on my mother's life, I thought of some of the stories about my life with her and those "monkeys" that brought the purest joy about her-and hope resurged-a hope that we would be granted the grace of God's healing to talk about some of those times both past and present that make us a family.
I am sure as she continues to recover, we will be communicating and reflecting more about those stories as she suggested in her response to me about the short story.
Tobyhanna Army Depot is the Defense Department's largest center for the repair, overhaul and fabrication of a wide variety of electronics systems and components, from tactical field radios to the ground terminals for the defense satellite communications network. Tobyhanna's missions support all branches of the Armed Forces.
About 5,600 personnel are employed at Tobyhanna, which is located in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania.
Tobyhanna Army Depot is part of the U.S. Army CECOM Life Cycle Management Command. Headquartered at Fort Monmouth, N.J., the command's mission is to research, develop, acquire, field and sustain communications, command, control computer, intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors capabilities for the Armed Forces.
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