Melodramatic Me

Melodramatic Me

The blog of Lisa Lintern

Monkeys in the zoo

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Next week Little Fairy starts school. My last cab off the rank. I feel like I’ve been too busy to dwell on this milestone. Besides, in the middle of last year we increased her days at preschool to five when I took on a hefty work contract. 

It was actually her idea to go five days. She’d overheard Busy-And-Important-Husband and I ruminating about how we would cope with the extra workload. She walked up to us both and announced she wanted to go to preschool all week like some of the other kids. Just like that. She waved her little magic wand and relieved the pressure. The transition was so easy we barely noticed it.
But this morning, after checking through the stationery list and unpicking the pleats from her new uniforms, I decided an ‘end-of-school-holidays’ celebratory trip to Taronga Park Zoo was in order for some quality mummy and her little monkeys time.
We’re lucky enough to live just down the road from the zoo. When we moved here it made sense to cough up and pay for membership, which means we can come and go as we please.  Something we have done for the past five years, especially on weekdays when I wasn’t working; often so quiet it felt like we had the place to ourselves.
And as always, today we stuck to our usual ‘zoo’ routine. 
We started with a round trip on the Sky Safari cable car – something my mechanically obsessed son has been in love with since the first time he laid eyes on it when he was 19 months old. Five years later, he still gazes at the wires and pulleys trying to work out how the darn thing works.
After that we marched with the crowd down to the fork in the road at the giraffes and squabbled about which way to go from there. 
“But I want to see the lemurs and they’re THAT way…”
“But I want to see the chimps and they’re THAT way…”
“But I want to see the lemurs and they’re THAT way…”
“But I want to see the chimps and they’re THAT way…”
And like many other trips before, it was here that I took a deep breath and wondered where the nearest coffee cart was.
Then it was on to the apes, the elephants, the big cats, the meerkats and the poor old goats clinging to the side of the fake concrete mountain that no one else seems to care about apart from Little Fairy.
“THEY DO NOT STINK,” she snapped at me today, highly offended after I uttered something under my breath about the aroma coming from their pen.  
Next stop the sun bear, the gibbon (the point where I always start to hum old Goodies’ songs) and then lastly the dreaded Backyard to Bush playground where the kids got soaked in the water play area, mummy cracked the shits and declared it was time to go home. 
Exhausted.
As we hauled ourselves up the hill to the exit we passed a mother pushing her children in a double buggy, the smallest toddler fast asleep.
“That used to be us,” I said and the three of us giggled.
And then I remembered. 
The way I had to fit so many necessities into the undercarriage of that buggy for just for a few hours away from home: the nappies, the wipes, the little cheese sandwiches, the little boxes of raisins, the change of clothes, the sunscreen and the water bottles. I remembered the awkward trips to the toilet, juggling two little people who were programmed to run in opposite directions the minute their feet hit the ground. 
All that stuff that once seemed such a hassle.
And then it hit me. Next week when my Little Fairy skips into school for the first time a big chapter in our lives will come to a close. 
And yes, there will be tears. But they’re likely to be mine. 
Two little monkeys…

Comments

  1. My littlest will be skipping off to school too. If I dwell on it, it makes me terribly sad, so I prefer to get excited about the next bit instead. I’m sure I will fight back tears on the day tough.. *sniff.

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  5. That is amazing! I can’t believe she’s off to school either! Didn’t we only just get over your son? Love how much you get to the zoo & it’s in the ‘hood but find it interesting that it’s still a hot & smelly place no matter how many times we go! Enjoy the brief peace! Love D

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  6. Those goats really stink, don’t they?

    My baby is going into Year 5 but Boy will be in Tear 10 and graduating so there will be lots of tears from me then.

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