I returned home from work to find my young daughter enjoying what was quite likely her final swim in the pool before heading to college the following morning. As she swam laps in the cool water, I lingered in the cool car, watching her, still mesmerized at her skill. Four years of high school swim team competition had certainly honed her abilities, and that had definitely helped to hone her figure.
Eventually, she reached one of the ladders and began to climb out of the water. She was breathing hard, her chest heaving, her breasts straining against the taut blue swimsuit, the band of rainbow colors making her waist appear even thinner than I knew it was. Her wet hair seemed plastered to her cheeks, yet she did not bother to brush it aside, opting only to remove her swim goggles and hold them by the strap as she approached the car, smiling with genuine happiness at seeing me even though she had just expended a fair amount of energy in the pool.
I had become quite accustomed to seeing her like this. In competition, the only differences would be the color of her swimsuit and the addition of a swim cap. On this Wednesday evening, however, instead of smiling at a teammate following a race, she was smiling at me.
The water cascading down her body further emphasized my daughter's curves. She may as well have been sculpted, chiseled into the form before me, the living statue slowly approaching the low wooden patio table where she had left a towel. As she set the swim goggles aside and picked up the towel, I finally shut off the engine and emerged from the car, closing and locking the door in time to turn around and have her standing before me.
"Welcome home, Daddy," she said sweetly, her breathing slowing a bit, her eyes beaming lovingly.
Despite the fact that I was wearing my work clothes, I took my daughter into my arms. Our hug was strong as usual, definitely heartfelt. The fact that she called me "Daddy" and I thought of her as "my daughter" really sometimes caught me off-guard, such as in this instance, given that she looked almost nothing at all like me.
Reiko Amanda was the offspring of some very close friends, a British man I had known in college and worked with early in my career and a Japanese woman he had met and bedded the night before our college graduation. The Japanese grandparents were not at all happy about the interracial relationship and marriage, and it was clear that Reiko Amanda and her mother Azumi were not welcome in Japan ever again. Given that Henry was an orphan, my friends had asked me to be Reiko Amanda's godfather, to which I enthusiastically agreed, and they had also asked that if something were ever to happen to them both, that I adopt her and raise her as my own daughter.
Unfortunately, I did indeed need to adopt her. She was practically a daughter to me anyhow given how much time she and her parents had shared with me at their home and mine. That was good, because when it was time to move Reiko Amanda into my home, the physical and mental transitions were easier than they could have been.
Through smart investing and hard work, while they had been taken from us rather early in life, Henry and Azumi had definitely set things in place so that Reiko Amanda would be fine financially. When she had turned eighteen, that money was officially turned over to her, and through her consistent excellence in school, she would barely needed to touch it to pay for college in full, meaning that she could devote much of her time to studying and swimming, even though the college was too small to have sports beyond a fledgling women's volleyball team and men's and women's basketball teams.
Although we had visited the pool on campus, I wondered just how often my daughter would be able to swim. As she looked up at me with her narrow hazel eyes bright with love, I wondered if she truly realized that her swimming "career" was officially over, that most likely her best opportunities to swim would be when she came home for a weekend or for vacations.
We separated, and we both looked at her wet imprint on my clothes. She and I were both quite familiar with this circumstance, and we simply grinned as she reached for my hand to lead me inside, barely allowing me time to retrieve my laptop bag from the roof of the car.
*****
Throughout the evening, Reiko Amanda wore the same swimsuit. This was nothing new, as she often wore a swimsuit or sometimes a bikini at home, especially during the summer, to save time when she wanted to return to the pool. While she definitely looked good in a bikini, the swimsuits helped her to remain in the competitive mindset, which had been quite important for four years.
...but not anymore.
"Glen arrived in Frankfurt today," she announced as she returned from the laptop in her bedroom. "He'll be heading to the university tomorrow to get things started."
Glen was certainly a good guy. His grades were only so-so, but he had a heart large enough to encompass several of the Great Lakes with room to spare. I had been quite happy when he had finally asked Reiko Amanda on a date, and even happier that they had stayed together for the two years until high school graduation. They did not so much break up as find themselves far apart, for his summer job was in the Alaskan wilderness, and he was home only for a few days before flying to Los Angeles and then on to Frankfurt.
Using the remote, I turned down the talking heads on the television, then patted my thigh. Eagerly, my daughter took her place in my lap, one of the traces of girlhood which remained. She leaned against me as I gently rubbed her side, enjoying the opportunity to hold her again. All too soon, I would only have this chance during vacations, or maybe a long weekend when she might come home.
"You miss him, don't you?"
"Yeah..." She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek, just as she had done countless times over the years. "I'll miss you, Daddy."
"So will I," I admitted. "I miss me already."
She fortunately giggled at the old joke and buried her face in my neck. Her hair was still slightly damp, but it felt rather good.
"How do you see me, Daddy?" Reiko Amanda asked softly.
"What do you mean?"
She seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering. "Do you see me as truly your daughter, as if you'd made me yourself? Or do you see me as the little girl you adopted?"
Strangely, she had never asked me this in the six years we had been living together. "To be honest," I admitted, "I see you as both. You may as well be my blood-related daughter -- I've known you practically since the moment you were born."
She made a soft, semi-sad sound, which surprised me.
"Why do you ask?"
She did not answer. Instead, my daughter kissed my cheek again, a bit more forward, and rested her head on my shoulder, with neither of us saying nothing for a long time, with the talking heads filling the air for us.
*****
I paused in the doorway and watched as my daughter packed a few more things. In the morning, we would load the car and begin our final journey together.
She must have felt my eyes on her, for Reiko Amanda turned around and gave me a soft smile. "It's not an empty nest yet," she noted.
