The Budget of Paradox

Sophia,

I know I complain a lot about your mom. Sorry. It’s not my intention to blame her for everything. But there are very few people standing in the room. I blame the lawyers for most of it. But I am bumfuzzled (now THERE is a great word) why she thinks I’m some abusive asshole who only wants to terrorize his own children.

Believe it or not, there was a time when your mother and I were happy. Here we are dancing at our wedding. Did you know that our wedding had a soundtrack? We picked out a dozen songs and had CDs printed, with artwork and everything. The last song on the CD was called Love On A Real Train. Here is the music video. I picked it out. There’s a special meaning.

I’m sorry that all you have ever seen from your parents is conflict. It wasn’t always this way. And it certainly was never meant to be this way.

I’m sorry. You’ll never know how sorry I am.

Yours,
Dad

Sophia,
Over e-mail, your mom agreed to share some information with you. I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I seriously doubt she’s telling the truth. If you ever see this, I’m wondering: did she really tell you?

If you think this is all ridiculous drama, I agree. I don’t know why she can’t simply let me be your father. I guess she thinks you don’t deserve one.

Yours, always,
Dad

Sophia,
I get e-mails and updates from your school. I saw this morning that your school is letting out two hours early because of weather. I’d love to call you at home when you’re there. I hope you’re not home alone and bored. I’d love to talk to you.
Love,
Dad

Sophia,
Happy New Year. I hope 2024 is the year you and I reconnect. I hope so. Your mother wrote to me recently to say that you don’t want to talk to me at all anymore. But, of course, I can’t hear it directly from you. I guess I have to take her word on that. She also said that you got the birthday present that I sent. But I’m not sure I believe her.

Have you ever written any software? Total change of subject, I know. Does your high school require any technology classes? Do they even teach programming anymore? Just curious. Your dad is a software engineer. But you already knew that, right? When I was in high school, I took classes in Pascal and COBOL. Pascal was good for teaching procedural programming. It’s static, strong and safe (I’ll explain what that means if you really want to know). But COBOL was already ancient when I learned it. It’s way beyond ancient now. But you’d be shocked to know how much of the world still runs on COBOL.

I’m working on a big project now. That’s why I was thinking about it. The code I’m writing now has lots of math. In fact, I was researching some math stuff and came across the word heteroskedasticity today. No kidding. It’s when a function’s standard deviation grows without bound instead of settling down. Anyway… I learned some fancy new word today.

What did you do for New Year’s Eve? I did nothing. Stayed inside.

I hope to talk to you soon,
Love, Dad

Sophia,

Joyous Kwanzaa, my spawn.

I wanted to call you yesterday. But I don’t know any of your phone numbers or media accounts. I don’t even know where you are right now. I asked your mom. Then I asked Kimberly and Nana Lee. Everyone ignored me.

I still don’t know why everyone is terrified that you might have a loving father in your life. Seems stupid to me. Every time you surrender to fear, you give up a little bit of your soul.

I hope your Christmas was enjoyable. At the very least, I hope peace was upon you, even for a moment. Life is so full of distractions. It’s important to have a moment of peace once in a while.

I am very sorry that I missed another Christmas with you. As far as I can recall, we’ve only had one Christmas together, in 2009, when you were only a year old. I have photos to prove it. I’d post them here but it’s probably a waste of time. You’ll probably never ask to see them. But, please prove me wrong.

I have no idea if you’re receiving the gifts I send you. I still don’t know if you got your birthday present this year. It seems pointless to keep sending you things if they’re being retired directly into the trash, which I suspect is their fate.

Nevertheless, I love you and miss you.
Dad