A Beatley Christmas

Chapter Five

    With the Lennons, there was no such thing as a normal entrance. As soon as the car pulled up to George's house, Julian stepped out and promptly slipped on some black ice, in the process knocking over a birdbath. Yoko, rushing to Jules, slipped on the same black ice, sending baby Sean flying through the air, and John barely had enough time to catch his son.

    "Oh!" Olivia cried, running out to them, bundled up to her nose in wool. "Jules, Yoko, are you okay?"

    "I'm fine," Yoko said and then helped Julian to his feet. "Are you all right?"

    "Yep. It's good," Julian said, rubbing his arm.

    Once discovering that his family members were unharmed, John decided it was free game to laugh at them. Olivia smiled, hiding a chuckle with her glove.

    Dhani came running around house, his scarf waving like a flag behind him, kicking up snow. He reached John and started jumping up and down excitedly. "Did you bring presents, Uncle John?"

    John feigned a disappointed expression. "Sadly, we didn't bring any this year."

    Yoko playfully smacked his arm. "Oh, shush." She bent down and smiled at Dhani. "Don't listen to him. We brought gifts. Lots of them. You can help us bring them in, if you'd like."

    "Yeah!" Dhani said and then went to the trunk of the car.

    "Where's George?" John asked Olivia.

    "He's around back dusting the snow off his gnomes," she said with amusement.

    "He takes his gnomes seriously," John laughed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get Sean inside."

* * *

"So you can't tell me what you got for me?" Dhani pleaded.

    "It's a secret," Julian chided gently.

    "If you tell me what you got for me, I'll tell you what we got for you."

    "Bribery isn't going to work." Julian desperately wanted to change the subject. He gazed up at the huge Christmas tree the Harrisons had in their even huger living room. "What is that donkey ornament up there?" He pointed.

    "That's my mom's," Dhani explained. "It's like a piñata, except it's just an ornament so it doesn't have any candy."

    "Bummer," Jules said. "What's this?" He pointed toward an ornament that looked a lot like a three with a curved line coming off of it.

    "That's my dad's," Dhani said. "It's called an ohhhh-m symbol, I think. It means everything in the universe, or something like that. It's hard to explain. There isn't one word in English that describes it."

    "Ohhhh-m, huh?"

    "Yeah."

    "Do you have an ornament?"

    "Yeah!" Dhani said and then went to the right side of the tree. "This lightsaber is mine."

    "You like Star Wars?"

    "Yeah!" Dhani exclaimed, getting excited. "They're so cool! I think Luke Skywalker is awesome! Do you like them?"

    "They're all right, I guess," Julian said, looking at the floor. To be honest, he had never seen the movies, but he didn't want to tell Dhani that and risk appearing lame.

    Dhani suddenly ran to the window and peered out, breath fogging up a small area of the glass. "Ooh! Look! Aunt Linda and Uncle Paul are here! Now we can play with James!" He took off running down the hallway. "Come on!"

    Julian hesitated for a few moments, remembering that Yoko had told him never to run in the halls of their house. Or run period. She hadn't wanted him to knock over anything valuable. But . . . this wasn't his house and there weren't extremely breakable vases every five feet.

    He took a deep breath and ran after Dhani.