That 90's Show

Who Am I?

LOLLY

December 18th, 1987;

Also known as the day my world turned upside down. The day I found out my father wasn't really my father.

It was nearly a week until Christmas and my parents had gone out shopping again. They had my Aunt Sage come stay with me while they were out per usual. Sage had always been the cool aunt, she always let me do what I wanted so long as I didn't get hurt. Mom and Dad met Sage when we first moved to New York, she owned the apartment we all lived in. Me, Mom, Dad, Sage, Jim, Max, and Pru. Since then though they've just all become aunts and uncles.

The night before I had concocted a plan. I was going to sneak down to our storage unit after they left and peek at my Christmas presents. It was foolproof. I told Sage I was going to see Harvey our doorman. Harvey was like a grandfather to me, I had known him as long as I could remember, so she was okay with it. When I got to the unit it was dark and scary which normally would have me running back up the stairs but I was too excited. Once inside I began right away.

I started with the boxes to the left and worked my way back and over. I had been in there for what must have been 30 minutes and had come up empty-handed. Frustrated I tossed a basketball off to the side and a box fell from one of the taller stacks. I hurried over to it and bent down, the first thing I saw was a suction bag with a cheerleaders uniform in it. I picked it up and underneath it was the lid to the box. On it was the initials P.P.W curious I turned to the overturned box and pulled it up carefully. The remnants scattered in front of me, photos, and papers foreign to me. The first thing to catch my eye was a picture of my mom. She was standing in front of a black car, between a guy's legs. He had his arm wrapped around her as she leaned into him. I flipped the photo over and on the back in my mom's handwriting was 'Steven and I, 1979' with a big heart beside it. I put it down and picked up another photo, it had my mom and the guy along with four other people. They were sitting together in what looked like a basement. On the back, it said 'The Gang, 1978'. The rest of the photos were all of my mom and 'the gang' or my mom and Steven. After the photos, I started going through the papers.

The first was a magazine article that was published by Woman's Weekly and was written by Donna Pinciotti-Forman, who I recognized from the photos

The next clipping was from the Milwaukee gazette, It was a picture of a cop who was also from the pictures, it said 'Police officer Michael Kelso saves woman in Milwaukee'. The other papers were of the same people in the picture's life achievements. Once I got through them I picked up a book that was in the box and opened it. Upon opening it I realized it was a scrapbook on the inside cover was noted, it said:

My Darling Lolly,

I don't think you could ever understand how much I truly love you. From the very moment I found out I was going to have you in my life, I couldn't understand how I had ever lived without you. You're my life, the one thing I will always go down fighting for. Also your father. He has loved you since the moment he saw you he committed himself to being the best dad he could possibly be. He loves you more than life itself, as do I. No matter what you feel or believe after seeing and reading the contents of this book, know you are our whole world. You are our baby girl.

I read it over and over trying to make my 10-year-old brain imagine what could be in this scrapbook that could make her write something so cryptic. However, after turning to the first piece of content I knew. The first thing was my birth certificate. At that moment I was thankful that my mom had started me with; early development. I was grateful I had learned to read and write almost two years before my peers, that she had instilled in me the importance of a good education early and that I had skipped ahead a year in school and was still in gifted classes. I was thankful because I knew what I read, I understood it immediately. The only confusion came from emotion. On my birth certificate was first the name 'Charlotte Camilla Hyde' instead of 'Charlotte Camilla Lennox' I moved down the certificate slowly trying to hold back the rising pain in my stomach. When I got to the father column I gripped the book tighter. So tight they started to go numb as I read it 'Father: Steven Hyde' I dropped the book and shook my head back and forth after a few minutes and a lot of 'nos' I had convinced myself to pick it back up. I slowly flipped through a few more pages. They were of Mom and him, Steven. My father.