The first time I met him, he was just “Mr. Cohan” to me. One Saturday afternoon my mother insisted I wash my face and hands and get dressed up so I could escort her out of our apartment house and meet some man waiting by his car. She’d gone out with men before. What was different about this one? Why did I have to stop what I was doing and change my clothes for him?
Why? Because he had asked her to marry him the night before, I later learned. He had already met my brother. Now he wanted to meet me.
“Hello, Mr. Cohan,” I said, anxious to run back inside and return to my games. “Hello, Susan,” answered a curly-haired, middle-aged man. He spoke softly, almost shyly, as he took my hand and shook it.
After he and my mother married, I didn’t know what to call him, and for a long time I didn’t call him anything. My friend called her new stepfather “Uncle,” but that seemed phony to me. “Leo” didn’t seem right, either. He called me Susan, or Sue, as my mother and brother did. He didn’t have to call me “Daughter”; did I have to say “Dad”? Who was this man to me? He seemed kind and gentle, and he even liked to have me around. But a father? Would calling him “Father” make him a father?
Stepping into a family already containing a mother, a teenage boy and a twelve-year-old girl, Leo knew he wouldn’t be treated like a father automatically. We were a long-established group; he was a new piece to be fitted in. It’s not that he had to compete with any love we felt for our “real” father, a cold, self-centered man who had been anything but kind, anything but caring in all the years we had known him. Leo’s job was harder - he had to compete with a fantasy, our unrealistically high expectations of what a perfect father should be: loving, caring, available, supportive, generous, clever and handsome. And, most of all, a perfect father would think his children were perfect, too.
Orphaned as a young child, Leo had been raised by older brothers and sisters who, although they loved him, never put his interests first in their lives, the way a devoted parent would. His own first marriage had been sad and unsatisfying. Now, at the age of fifty, he had married a woman with two children, accepting all the responsibilities and financial obligations this would entail.
That first year the four of us lived together, Leo spent a lot of time fixing and building things in our new home. It was his way of putting down roots, I guess, of establishing a firm foundation on which our new family could stand. He stained the wood paneling in the den, hung wallpaper in the bathrooms and designed and constructed cedar closets in the basement.
But, at the same time we were becoming a family, I was becoming an adolescent: self-absorbed, defiant and rebellious. My mother and I, who had always been close, now seemed to argue all the time. “Why can’t you behave?” she angrily asked me. “You won’t let me do anything my way!” I countered, and stormed out of the room. I had to talk to someone. I found Leo in the basement, working on the closets. Slowly, methodically, he was planing a piece of wood. Then he sanded it carefully, letting me talk, offering me a piece of sandpaper to help him smooth the edges, giving me a few nails to hold while he positioned the wood on the wall, and having me help him hammer it into place. “She’s impossible!” I told him. “She yells at me for every little thing. Whatever I do has to be perfect to satisfy her.”
He nodded as I talked, and kept on working. I wished he would take my side - how could anyone not? - but he knew he was caught in the middle. “Your mother only wants you to aim for perfection,” he said softly. “That shouldn’t be too difficult for you. I think you’re pretty exceptional.”
Leo and I spent a lot of time together in the basement that first winter. He taught me how to work with tools so I, too, could build, paint and repair things. That time became a good outlet for a lot of adolescent frustrations. That basement - which my mother rarely visited - became a “safe haven” for me to escape to. Leo was there for me whenever I needed him. He didn’t solve my problems, but encouraged me to sort things out for myself. What I needed - and what he gave me - was a sympathetic ear. “You know,” he once remarked, “you and your mother have a lot in common. You’re both energetic, spirited and strong-opinioned people. That’s why you sometimes irritate each other. But that’s also what I like about you... the two of you.”
Leo was a calm man, slow moving and contemplative. He loved to fish, but what appealed to him more than the desire to catch anything was the peacefulness and serenity he’d find out on a lake in a rowboat. In fact, when he did catch something, he’d always chuckle. Then he’d hold the struggling fish gently in his hand, being careful not to squeeze it too hard. Very quickly, he would slip the hook out of the fish’s cheek, wipe its mouth with a rag the way a parent pats a child, and toss it back into the water. I’d never seen a fisherman so concerned about his fish.
Dinnertimes, he often brought home small, inexpensive surprises - a flowered-china light-switch plate for my bedroom wall, a sports magazine for my brother. Conversations at the table were lively. He listened to our stories about school, complaints about homework, tales about victories on the athletic field and all our silly jokes. He always assumed we were smart and treated us as if we were. “Try this,” he’d begin, and we knew what was coming: a new mind teaser he’d just heard at work or read in the paper. He’d laugh in the end after we had figured out the answer. “I knew I couldn’t trick you!” he’d boast, shaking his head but beaming at the same time.
The first June I lived with Leo, I biked to a popular men’s store in town, with two weeks’ allowance and all my baby-sitting money from the past month. Heady masculine aromas of after-shave lotions and colognes intoxicated me as I entered the store. I had never been in a men’s shop before. Pictures of hunting scenes were mounted on dark wood-paneled walls, and rich plaid carpeting covered the aisle floors. Men’s suits, ties, bathrobes, pajamas, shoes, slippers and jewelry were displayed everywhere. At the age of thirteen I had come to purchase my first Father’s Day gift.
Maleness was no longer something to shy away from. Now I knew a man who was gentle and loving. Father’s Day was not just for other families. This year it would be our holiday, too.
I selected a blue silk tie decorated with rows of tiny fish, and carried it home pridefully. The next Sunday morning I gave it to Leo, who put it on immediately, right over his pajamas. “Thanks so much,” he said. “I’ll treasure this.” He put his arms around me and kissed my cheeks.
“You’re welcome,” I answered. “Happy Father’s Day, Dad.” I said it as casually as possible, but I saw him smile and knew he heard me.
You might think that because my natural father had been so cruel, I’d have welcomed any other man who was halfway decent. But memories of my childhood practically destroyed any hopes I had of having a warm, loving relationship with someone who tried to be a father to me. Before Leo came into my life, I’d had it with fathers. It was the simplicity, honesty and constancy of his friendship that won me, and I have never forgotten how lucky I have been.
Gradually, over time, our new family has created its own common roots and traditions. It was Leo who sent my brother and me to college, saw us married and has now shared so much of his time and love with our children - his grandchildren. Sure, they’ve been told he’s a “step”-grandfather, but what’s it to them? “Pa” has loved them since the day they were born. He took them for strolls, read to them and rocked them. Later on he taught them how to fish and work with tools. He’s been a one-man cheering squad at their soccer games, baseball games, piano recitals and school plays. Just as he used to do with me. Just as he taught me to do with my kids.
Children, I have learned, are entitled to be cared for by kind, loving adults who are not only parents to them but friends as well.
Leo chose my mother, and he chose my brother and me, too. We are family and friends by choice - not by birth or blood. His friendship - and his love - has been a gift that I will never forget.
- Susan J. Gordon