Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 11:50:47 -0400 X-Sender: teddyt@teddyt.pop.crosslink.net Mime-Version: 1.0 To: laura@netgate.net From: Ted Subject: Christmas Day in the Morning Christmas Day in the Morning (F/m) Christmas Morning dawned bittersweet in the O'Hanlon household. Virginia and Frank had nine children. The girls, all known by their nicknames-- Sasha, Danny, Prissy, Vicky, Connie, Kewpie, Donnie and Missy -- had been on their best behavior for weeks, their hearts heavy with the suspicion this would be the last happy holiday they would celebrate together. It would, indeed, be special. Because if it hadn't have been for the sudden illness that struck their younger brother, Rudy, that summer, Virginia and Frank certainly would have been separated by now. So as the most joyous day of the year had arrived everywhere else in town, the O'Hanlon's were getting a late start. For some inexplicable reason, something sharp had separated the electrical line running from the street to the junction box at the roofline of their house. All power had been cut off sometime after midnight, and everyone had overslept. Quickly, Dad and Virginia scrambled downstairs when they realized the break in both electrical current and tradition. Dad drained a milk glass and set it next the cookie crumbs on a plate by the fireplace, then scattered some ashes on the living room floor. Mom opened the blinds to let sunshine stream in. In their rush to celebrate Christmas morning, perhaps the last all 11 of them would have together, Sasha scooped Rudy out of bed without the necessity of affixing his leg braces. She put the 6-year-old down on the floor near the Christmas tree and the family watched as he attacked his first present. Lincoln Logs! Those rough-hewn pieces of interlocking brown cylinders and green roofbeams. It was an excellent choice Santa had made, for the boy -- one of the thousands crippled by the polio epidemic that year -- could now build to his heart's content at a tabletop. He could become the architect of log cabins -- and the architect of dreams that would never come to fruition. He would never walk unaided, the doctors said, and if the antibiotics prescribed just last week did not take, Rudy might not see his seventh birthday in February. For that reason, and that reason alone, Virgina and Frank stayed together, despite her refusal to share the marital bed any longer and his disgust with her orgiastic fantasies of dagger-wielding pirates swashing their buckles in a style that altar-boy Frank would never consider. The one thing the couple had always agreed upon, however, was raising the children by the book. The Good Book. And that meant the eight girls -- aged 8-17 -- were well versed in both manners and in the consequences of misappopriating them. Both mom and dad never hesitated to paddle any one their children no matter when or where, if the situation required it. All except Rudy, of course. Rudy was special. He had truly been a "mistake," for the O'Hanlons had decided with much trepidation to sidestep the Church's proscription against birth control when they ran out of closet space with the birth of Missy. But they had little practice, and Rudy was born. The wrath of God for their errancy, they felt, was the polio that felled their boy the previous summer as he sat in a movie theater watching the forbidden "Creature from the Black Lagoon." As a result of their sin, and a result of his sneaking off to the movies, the O'Hanlon family as they knew it was on the verge of dissolution. But that would wait until 1954. Each in turn, the girls opened their presents -- poodle skirts, Rosemary Clooney recordings for the Victrola, a Princess Summerfallwinterspring puppet, a plastic screen for watching Winky Dink and You, a Rootie Kazootie television studio made of cardboard cutouts, saddle shoes, a Captain Video lunchbox, and a subscription to Hit Parade magazine and an Eddie Fisher fan club membership. Mom and Dad had exchanged their personal presents the night before and they both repaired to the kitchen to pitch on on the pancakes, sausages and eggs that would have bankrupted them had there been nine boys in the family instead of eight girls conscious of their weight. Forgetting that little Rudy had been carried downstairs quickly without his braces, the family had left him alone on the floor with his Lincoln Logs. As is the wont of all small children, even in so close and crowded a family, Rudy felt abandoned. He called out to Donnie, his pigtailed brat of a 9-year-old sister for help. She popped back out of the dining room, mocking him cruelly with a fake limp and a tongue sticking out. It was a most un- Christianlike thing to do, but Donnie was plain tired of Rudy getting all the attention and she was just as happy to leave him out of the festivities for a while. She deserved a happy Christmas, too. He sat and cried a little, feeling miserable. But not for long. He suspected his shriveled legs would not recover, and he felt so tired so often lately that maybe he now understood what all the whispering among doctors and red-eyed parents was really abll about. That darn Donnie, he fretted. Rudy was distracted from his funk, however, by the babble of excitement from the kitchen and dining room as the power came back on. Dad had climbed onto the roof, used his newfangled Polaroid-Land camera to document what nobody would believe, and -- using the electrician skills he learned in the Navy in the Big War -- reattached the downed power line. Rudy had tired of the Lincoln Logs and sat stewing about the present he really had hoped for -- a baseball. But he knew that Santa, while fallible, was not cruel. What would Rudy do with a baseball? It was then that Figaro the cat started batting an overlooked gift-wrapped package from under the Christmas tree. The thing sort of wobbled and rolled toward the lonely boy. He hefted it in his hand and examined the green and red paper for a name tag. He found none. Looking around to see if his parents, or his sisters, or Santa, or God, would notice him opening something that was not definitely his. Only Figaro espied him. His fingers tingled as he unwrapped the mysterious gift. Could it be? Yes! Yes! It WAS a baseball! And it was signed by Monty Stratton! A hero to all boys and men who overcame disability. And it said, "To Rudy, *my* hero." The yammering and cackling of the girls receded in his ears now flushed with excitement and pounding of his rising blood pressure. He sat, legs withered and asplay on the hardwood floor, but in his mind Rudy was pitching for the Yankees, and in a far distant future throwing a perfect game in the World Series. That's when Donniebrat re-emerged from the kitchen with a plate bearing a single leftover pancake for her brother. Though he was only 6, going on 7, Rudy bore an old man's hatred of his sister. Without thinking, he drew back his right arm -- his strongest limb -- and fired what the pros called "chin music" at his startled sister, who dropped the plate, syrup-side down, into a thousand slivers. Well *that* brought Rudy to Mom and Dad's attention, all right. "Where did you get that ball, Rudy!" yelled Dad. Mother looked distraught that her sickly child had started acting like the others. "Young man! How could you?" she wailed. "Momma," Rudy announced. "I couldn't help it anymore. I am tired of being treated like I'm not part of the family. I got mad at Donnie, and if you need to spank me for it, go ahead." With that, Rudy stood up, his spindly legs suddenly straight and muscled as those of Bob Mathias, and marched to his open- mouthed mother. He handed her one of the long green sticks from the Lincoln Log set, took his own pajama pants down, leaned into the warmth of his mother's midsection and accepted with a grimace and a grin a stand-up spanking to the cheers of his sisters and the tears of his parents. ###