Dev Berger is a retired health policy consultant living in Sacramento, CA, who started her writing career as a freelance journalist, writer for radio commentaries, and then worked as a writer/editor for state government agencies and labor/employee associations. Years ago, she and her late husband Derek Pogson a former press officer and reporter had a writing business on the side. She currently works as a volunteer managing editor for the Retired Public Employees Association in California and continues writing for pleasure and learning with a wonderful writing group in Sacramento.
Everyone thinks Koko was the first of us to learn sign language. But anyone who eats bananas knows it was Washoe, a chimpanzee who could combine signs to create new meanings such as “water bird” for a swan and “dumb ape” meaning humans.
My name is Willow, I’m a Capricorn and Washoe was my great, great, great grandmother. She taught her daughter how to sign and after that it just kept on repeating itself with mothers teaching their daughters ASL signs. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Right now, we are all mourning the Great White Mother, whom no one would dream of calling a dumb ape. Great White Mother was a different breed made of the breath of angels, the heart of butterflies, the mind of earth mixed with sky mixed with mountains, lakes and all the flora and fauna in the world.
Great White Mother watched us, lived with us, and wrote that we were no different from those dumb apes, who saw us as inferior creatures and yet we were bi-lingual, weren’t we? We learned a human language, but they never learned ours. Too complicated for minds as soggy as cooked oatmeal.
When she died, we felt what we call the Wind of Wisdom and Light rise from her and blanket the skies. Her Wind of Wisdom and Light tickled the stars, making them laugh with a sparkling brightness impossible to ignore. She was a lava flow of love flooding the world and every primate felt its immaculate softness and joy.
Her passing brought so many memories for those of us who were in contact with her in Tanzania. I remember the time I sat with her and watched my first film on her computer. King Kong it was called. I watched, mesmerized as a film crew flies to this mysterious island and captures the great, giant ape Kong. They bring him back to New York where Kong escapes and goes on a rampage and takes this beautiful woman to the top of the Empire State Building, before he is shot and plummets to his death. The greed, the clash between the wild and civilization, where the latter is far crueler, had me in tears, except for when the woman Kong took to the top of that building is profoundly sad for his death.
There it was. Love.
The Great White Mother saw how I felt and we embraced until the sadness was done with me. I signed that she would always have my heart, and she said she would always have mine.
Before we parted, she said: “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” Later I learned she was quoting some writer. But it didn’t matter. Those words were part of her wisdom and light that tickled my insides as they had the stars.
