I had to email Santa last night. It's sort of a long story.
When we were kids, my mother put this little furry looking Christmas critter up on a shelf and told my younger brother that he was a spy for Santa Claus sent to determine how naughty and nice we all were being.
At the time, I already knew the scoop on Santa, so I played along with the joke.
Every night or so, my mother or I would move the little doll to a new spot; somewhere high usually. We warned him that the creature must NEVER be touched or handled.....as that would surely result in a really bad report to Santa.
My brother sucked it all up for a few years until he got wise.
Skip ahead a few decades.
Last year, or maybe the year before, my mother send Delaney (my oldest…currently six yo) a package that had in it a book and a stuffed elf doll. The book laid out basically the same concept; the elf was to be named and the name would be written in the book.....it went on to explain that the elf must not be touched; that it was not a toy, etc; and after Christmas the elf would fly back to the North Pole with Santa, not to return until the next holiday season arrives.
She named the elf Pete and the whole thing went over very well.
I fetched Pete out of my sock drawer a few weeks ago and set him atop a high shelf. He has subsequently moved to the inside of a stocking hung high, and for the past several days he has been sitting in a small Christmas tree that is in the kid’s toy room.
Last night, after dinner, Deanna and I were downstairs doing something or other. The kids were both upstairs playing.
We heard a bloodcurdling scream……………pure terror; this was the kind of scream you never want to hear from a child. I fully expected that something truly terrible has happened. The little one (almost three) is adventurous and has a tendency to climb. To be honest, the picture in my mind was that of her laying unconscious in a pool of blood.
While these thoughts were racing through my mind, Delaney barreled down the stairs toward Deanna and I.....screaming without interruption nor a decrease in intensity.
I ran to her and met her at the bottom of the stairs.....she tried to run past me to her mother but I snatched her up. She was almost spastically kicking, flailing arms, screaming at the top of her lungs……it was as if her conscious mind had shut down because of what she had just experienced. Tears were running like rivers.
I almost too forcibly restrained her and began to ask her what happened.
“Delaney...what hap...”
“PETE FELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”.
The emotional shift from near panic to extreme amusement knocked the wind out of me and I stifled a chuckle.
Deanna turned her head away.
It took a good minute or two to get Delaney to calm down. I have never heard her wail like that and I hope I won’t ever hear it again.
Apparently she was on the floor doing something and bumped the dresser sized cabinet on which the small tree was placed....the elf fell out of the tree and landed right on her back.
I told her to calm down and stay put while I go see if Pete is OK. When I got upstairs, the poor guy was laying on the floor.....one of his slim legs bent cruelly behind his back. I stuck him on a shelf and went back downstairs.
“Delaney...you have to show Daddy where Pete fell; I can’t find him anywhere”.
“NOooooooooo......I can’t”.
“Calm down honey...we have to find him because he might need help”
Eventually I convinced her to walk up the steps. Her approach to the toy room reminded me of the cop shows where a parent is asked to identify the body of their child, but she courageously walked to the scene and was surprised and terrified to find that Pete was gone.
Before this made matters worse, Deanna issued a surprised laugh and said, “Hey LOOK!!! There he is!!”.
I gave Pete a very good look-over and announced that he seems OK.
Deanna suggested that perhaps he had not fallen at all, but was simply moving to a new spot and jumped on Delaney’s back for a ride. This seemed to work.
Part of the placation deal was that we would email Santa and fess up, let him know it might have been an accident, etc.
It was a cute email....which of course I sent to my mother.
