Recovered from the private logs of Dr. Batuk Obi.
Dated: 12/02/2024
So... Here's the thing...
My daughter is not a Daddy's girl by any stretch. She's not a Mommy's girl either, if that's even a thing, she's just a girl. An independent woman, and that's that.
Now don't misunderstand, there's no ill will between the three of us. No final argument, no tightening of privileges, no slammed doors, no groundings or rebellious moments or anything like that. My wife and I love and trust our daughter, and she loves and trusts us. At least I haven't heard anything to the contrary.
All in all I'd say we are an exceptionally average family.
Which makes what came next all the more earth shattering.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, I don't know... my therapist, god bless him, suggested I get everything that's on my mind down, so that our meetings aren't so difficult, not that he'd mind of course, his rates go by the hour. However the fact that he wants to make our sessions easier means that he's hoping for real progress. I don't know... He doesn't know of course, I mean... How do you go telling anyone about this kind of stuff? Even with the doctor patient agreement, I still could never be confident that he wouldn't tell someone. Best case scenario he'd only tell my wife, worst case...
I suppose I'll give an incredibly abridged version of my life up to the point of its dramatic changing. I'm born to a Bengali mother and Nigerian father. The two of them were reasonably wealthy and met while they were both attending Harvard University for Law. Yadda ya they graduate, Dad works at the DAs office and Mom starts her own private practice and a few years later I pop out.
My upbringing was what it was, and eventually I'm 18 and I'm accepted to Harvard Law. While I'm studying I meet this girl, Amber and years later she and I get married.
Amber still looks as good now as she did then. She's trimmed her blonde hair down just below her shoulders, her blue eyes still piercing through all my walls whenever we catch each other's gaze. She's stunning and perfect and I do love her. She's confident in all the ways I'm not, she laughs at my bad jokes, and not that I'd ever tell her so, but she is much smarter than I am. I suppose that's why she thought she could go for a fine arts degree. She's an accountant now, but there was a time when she had everyone convinced she'd be the first household name screenwriter.
Anyways, Thanksgiving 2002 arrives and Amber and I shared each other's nighttime company as normal, only this time we're both a little half in the bag, and forgot to put on the condom. (We had moved to Mississippi for a few years in the early 2000s, and the pill wasn't super easy to get. Post 9/11, support for W Bush was high and contraceptives especially in the deep south? Forget it.)
Come July of the following year out pops Aubrey and she's so white she's practically translucent. We get the paternity test, just in case, and yup she's mine all right, not that I was really worried. Amber was kind of a recluse, and even if I was worried, as the weeks and months passed the more and more Aubrey looked like me. Her pale ass skin and green eyes had to have been from her Mom (or maybe me I have no clue how eye color genetics work when Mom has blue eyes and Dad has brown, how do you get green? Anyway.) but her jet black hair was definitely my side of the family.
It was a deadly combo of genetic traits and though she never developed very much in a curvature sense, I knew she'd be a heartbreaker for the ages.
We had gotten a taste of baby fever though and a year and a half later Amber and I went at it again and in December 2005 out popped David. Again the whitest baby I'd ever laid eyes on when he came out, but as he got older he got darker. Again same jet black hair as me and his sister, but with my brown eyes and an almost identical facial structure. My wife frequently says that looking at David is like a time capsule of me 20 years ago.
At adulthood Aubrey had elected to spend a gap year, which then turned into gap years, until just last April she surprised everyone by applying to Yale, and against all odds she was accepted, that's where she is now.
David had gone to college straight out of high school and is currently attending UC - Berkeley, with his major (for now) set to Film Studies. He always took more after his mother.
Anyways the point of all this...
This was a few years ago, 2022, I guess was when it started. Can't believe it's been two years already, time flies...
Anyhow, if I could stay focused for a minute.
So, 2022, it was December, and David was still in High School, Aubrey was in her first of two gap years, so she was out of the house a ton. Anyways, by some miracle all four of us found ourselves not only home, but completely available on David's birthday. None of us had any plans whatsoever. I'd expected this from Amber and I, but the fact that Aubrey was available was surprising to all of us.
Long story longer, we sat around the living room early in the morning. We'd all separately gotten up within 20 or so minutes of each other. Just one of those days when we were all in sync I guess...
So we'd been in the living room chatting and Amber asked David if there's anything special he'd like to do with the four of us on his birthday. David says he doesn't need to do it with all four of us, hell he didn't really need to do it with any of us, but he told us that he was going to watch all the Lord of the Rings movies, and sort of make it a day long movie marathon.
I was skeptical, and figured I'd watch as much as I could handle before eventually excusing myself, but my wife suggested that it could be just like old times.
When the kids were little we'd do movie nights, pretty frequently with all four of us. It started with stuff for kids, Toy Story, Incredibles, Little Mermaid, what have you. Then we graduated to YA stuff, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter. Then we started to peter out when movie night was co-opted for rom-coms with Amber and Aubrey, or action schlock with David and I. It got to the point where if all four of us were there for movie night it was because it was a nostalgic watch like Emperor's New Groove, or Grease or something we'd all already seen thousands of times.
Anyways at the behest of my wife the four of us all gathered around the TV for what would probably be our last movie night.
David popped the first one in as we were still getting settled. And for the first film all was normal. The four of us sat on our reasonably large couch, with a good foot or so separating each of us, and as Frodo and Sam climbed down off a mountain and the credits rolled, we agreed on taking a short lunch break.
We'd ordered some pickup, and ordered extra so that if/when we got hungry later we could just reheat any leftovers. My wife and David left to go pick it up.
Anyway as we were waiting, Aubrey and I were able to catch up. She and I talked about what she'd been getting up to in her gap year, how she was doing, and what she was thinking about afterwards.
So, I keep it reasonably cold in the house. A solid 69 degrees was fine for me, but my daughter frequently disagreed, saying during the winter it was sometimes warmer outside than in the house. It was an exaggeration, but the point of my bringing this up is to say that I hadn't seen her without a hoodie in probably 4 months.
Anyhow, we're talking and she brings up that she's thinking about getting another tattoo. I didn't know she had any, so she took off her hoodie and started showing me. She'd gotten a sun on her shoulder blade, an anime character (apparently named Levi) inside a heart on her right arm, and a bundle of roses on the other one. She had some text under her collarbone that read 'Not all tears are an evil.' (Which a few hours later I'd discovered was a quote from Return of the King) At this point she starts rolling up one of her sweatpant legs, and shows me a sea turtle and a squid on her calf and thigh respectively. Then she said, and I'll never forget this: "I have another one I can show you if you're a good boy today."
I remember she turned bright red right after, and immediately apologized, saying something about only giving certain guys the tour, and had the breakdown semi rehearsed and just forgot to omit that part of the script.
I laughed and just brushed it off saying something to the effect of 'If I was a suitor the line would certainly entice.' It was a dumb thing to say, but I was just wrapped up in the flirting. Thankfully Aubrey didn't seem to mind and giggled before playfully punching me in the arm.
Fast forward and Amber and David are back with the food. We pig out on the sofa as David pops in the second film.
As we're watching I start to feel a little bloated and lay what was left of my fries on my lap. Aubrey clocks this and asks if she can have the rest. I say yes, and instead of taking the plate from my lap, she moves the plate down so it's resting on my left leg, and lays her head on my lap and snacks passively while still watching the film.