It was a final get-together, a day-long pool party for my daughter and her two closest friends before they went their separate ways. Hanna would be going to Connecticut for college, Natasha would be attending a university in California, and my Diane would be attending a college in Illinois.
I largely left the three of them alone. I made an appearance for lunch, and ate with them at the picnic table in the backyard before returning inside. Sitting with three stunning young women in bikinis was a nice boost for my ego, even though I was more than twice their age and one of them was my own daughter.
Purposely, I spent the afternoon inside, just as I had during the morning, giving them their privacy on their final day together. Listening to the three of them splashing in the pool and bantering back and forth made me acutely aware of the fact that, all too soon, I would no longer hear such youthful sounds.
All too soon, I would have an empty nest.
With a sigh, I stood at the kitchen window, looking across the yard to the pool where the three young women were about to dive in and probably race toward the shallow end of the pool. Three young women who had definitely grown and matured over the years. It was strange that I had almost missed it, for I remembered all three of them in the backyard for Diane's tenth birthday party.
...just hours before her mother left us forever.
Although we had no idea what had become of her, I was certain that if she could watch these activities now, her mother would definitely be proud. Diane had certainly become much like her mother at the same age, only slightly shorter and with fewer inhibitions.
Her mother had left us, and in a few days, she would leave me as well. The large house would then truly seem empty.
Perhaps it was finally time to sell. They had moved on, so perhaps it was time for me to move on as well.
When Diane came inside later to get more Diet Cokes for the group, I was sitting at the kitchen table, thoughts of the forthcoming empty nest consuming me. "What's wrong, Daddy?" she asked with genuine concern.
I sighed. "Watching and listening to you three out there," I admitted, "I suddenly realized that soon I won't have anyone to watch or listen to. You and Natasha and Hanna are all heading to colleges and universities elsewhere."
It was not until my daughter was holding me that I realized that I was crying. Specifically, she stood beside me, and I was crying into her chest. Part of me was shocked by that fact given that, even though I had watched Diane mature from a tiny baby to a young woman, I had never thought of her in a sexual way, not even when I had to take her shopping for her first bras at great embarrassment to us both. Yet part of me seized onto the fact that, for the first time in many years, I was actually having contact with breasts - I could not even remember having ever bumped into my daughter's chest purely by accident.
At that moment, I was no longer her father and she was no longer my daughter. At that moment, we were simply two souls, one comforting the other, one finding solace in the other, bonding together.
Her heartbeat in my ear soothed me even more than her comforting presence. Reluctantly, I tore my head away, and her arms fell away from me as I looked in disbelief at the chest against which my face had just been pressed, yet the shame I felt was amazingly minimal.
"I'll be back," Diane whispered, drawing my eyes up to her face - where they should have been focused anyhow. And with that, she took a six-pack of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and returned outside to her closest friends.
I was feeling a little bit better about twenty minutes later. Sitting in the recliner in the living room with a friend's manuscript, I realized that I was not hearing the girlish laughter or the splashing from outside, but it was not anything worth worrying about - after all, they were all fine young women, each of them rather mature for her age, so there was no reason to be concerned.
...at least, not about them, but about me, for I suddenly thought about how Diane's breasts had felt against my face, about how my skin had felt so much more "alive" when pressed against her bare flesh instead of against her thin bikini bra. I thought of how Hanna's wet bikini panty had formed itself almost like a second skin against her sex when I had looked out the window earlier and noticed her laying in a lounge chair with her legs spread somewhat wide. I remembered Natasha's thong leaving virtually nothing to the imagination when she had bent over to pick up the apple core which had inadvertently fallen from her plate just after lunch.
...and those thoughts had me aroused. Three beautiful young women - all quite intelligent, all very mature, all one hundred percent female - were in my backyard, and, to the best of my knowledge, they were all single.
...just like me.
