Once upon a time.... there was a little girl who became known in later years as Frankie to some, and Ye Olde Batt to others. (OK, so now you know that this story is about me.)
This little girl was on the verge of becoming a young lady, but was fighting it as hard as she could.... she still believed that there was a Santa... well sort of... she was really not sure whether there was a Santa Claus or not... but she really really wished there was.
Several times she asked her mother if Santa would come this year and each time her mother would say, "Oh yes, of course, Santa always comes to good girls!" Her mother wasn't getting it. She was hoping that her mother would give her a definitive answer but she was too scared to come right out and ask.
All the week before Christmas, when school closed for the holidays, the little girl was very excited... Christmas was the best. But then she got to thinking about her Santa Claus dilemma and her excitement would wane a little... would he come or not. Maybe if she stopped believing in Santa then he wouldn't come anymore. Finally, she went to her older sister and asked her if she thought that Santa would be there that year. Her older sister just ignored her, which she did on a regular basis anyway.
A few days before Christmas, her Father came home with a brand new stereo. It was the best Christmas gift ever. They had never had a new stereo before... just an old record player. But lots of people were getting new stereos.... and it even had an 8 track player!!! (Now that dates me doesn't it!) The very first 8 track they bought and played on that stereo was a Christmas one.... and it always had a special feeling to hear those Christmas songs ever after. With such a smashingly awesome Christmas gift, that came a few days before Christmas,.... it could only mean that Christmas that year was going to be the best ever..... if she could only believe in Santa, that is....
Christmas Eve day came and the little girl got ready to go out to her Aunt's and Uncle's homes to go visiting like they always did. They were visiting her third Uncle's house around about midnight, when someone yelled to come and look out the window. She flew to the window with all the others and there driving down the street was a truck with Santa in the back..... the little girl listened to everyone getting excited. Her Aunts and Uncles were telling the little cousins that the Jolly Old Guy would soon be there for sure. A short while later her mother and father bundled them all up and drove home to their own quiet house.
The little girl was getting into her pajamas when her mother came into her bedroom to tell her that she had better hurry because Santa would be there soon. Her mother tucked her into her bed and gave her a kiss and turned out the light. The little girl lay there thinking about the man she had seen at her Uncle's house, in the back of the truck because that was certainly what he had been... just a man... not Santa at all. Santa would be way more magical than what she had seen. Santa was special... that was for sure... while the man in the back of the truck was just sad.... he didn't have anything magical about him at all. As a matter of a fact, the little girl thought that he might have been drunk. But if she didn't believe in Santa then she had the feeling, in her heart, that something horrible would happen. Like something inside of her would die away and she would never get it back. So the little girl made up her mind that she would believe, and that was that.... she would put the whole thing out of her mind and believe with all her heart.
Next thing the little girl knew she was waking up and it was the middle of the night and she had to go to the bathroom and pee really badly. She lay there a few minutes trying to decide on what to do next. Should she get up and go pee or would that scare Santa away.... Maybe Santa wouldn't come if she were out of bed roaming around the house. This was a serious dilemma because she had never woken up before on Christmas Eve and needed to pee in the middle of the night. It was only 3 a.m. and her mother and father, not to mention her older sister, would never want her to get up at this hour in the morning. Finally she decided that she would hold her pee and not go to the bathroom. 3 hours till 6 a.m. would not be dreadful. She could manage that!
That lasted about ten minutes before she decided, if she didn't go to pee she would burst.
Now her problem was how to get to the bathroom without anyone hearing her and especially Santa (if he were in the house) since he must have special hearing if he was magical.... would he hear her if she got up and moved around? Very slowly she began to slide out of bed an inch at a time. Santa was so magical that, if he was in the house, then he might even hear her blankets being thrown back... so she moved like a slug inching along a little by little. By the time she was in a standing position it had taken her ten whole minutes and she still had to get down the hall to the toilet. I won't bore you at this point with her creeping technique but suffice it to say that she was on the verge of having her bladder move out in disgust with the amount of fluid it was expected to hold, by the time she got to where she needed to be. It was while she was sitting on the well,... you know, when it dawned on her that Santa might already have been there and gone again... and that she could probably go and have a peak to see whether or not there were any gifts under the Christmas tree. Again she moved very slowly down the hall.... just in case! By the time she was ready to peak into the living room, where the tree was standing, it was well past 4 a.m.
At the end of the hallway, there was a turn to the right to go into the kitchen and a turn to the left to go into the living room. She was ready to peak to the left and so she leaned very slowly to the left and stopped dead in her tracks. All the breath went out of her chest. There bending over their brand new stereo was Santa himself and he was just as she had always imagined him. She stood up so fast that she almost gave herself a bad case of whiplash. Scurrying back the way she came, she dove into her bedroom and under the covers before you could say 'Rudolph'. There she lay, with the blankets up to her nose, and eyes as wide as saucers. She could hardly breathe and the adrenaline was raging through her body so that she could have wrestled an elephant and not missed a beat. Santa had been there and he had been the real one because you could see right through him. He wasn't like a drunk old man in the back of a truck he was real... he was real... he was really real....!!!!
It took several more years, before TV and all the other normal things in this life managed to wipe that belief out of her mind. But she never... ever forgot that image of that surreal Santa bending over the new stereo having a good look at it. And in her heart Santa always was as real as snow flakes, he was as real as a horse dancing in the snow on Christmas morning. He was as real as tears on a mother's face when her heart is breaking as she tells her children that she bought their gifts for them and that it had never been Santa Claus.
May you always have the belief of a child in your heart this Christmas and always.
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