As a kid, I was usually glad to have a father around.
When my folks divorced, I was okay with getting a second father when my mom remarried.
Things between me and my two fathers were rocky back then. That’s what happens when experience and The Wonder Years collide. Lots of expectations. Some joys. A few disappointments. Many grudges. Mostly mine.
Then, along came my third father. A man who opened himself to the object of his daughter’s interest, despite his patchwork of professions, car trunk full of recycling and the fact that he lived with his grandmother. Early on, my third father and I shared life’s joys and disappointments through which my world grew larger and more forgiving. There were no caveats . . . No, just one: “Take care of our daughter.”
Over time, the father-in-law I could never call Stephen morphed into Papa Stephen and then, just plain Popski. For 26 years, Popski bore judge-less witness to the life Susan and I built together. He brought the same unwavering devotion and love to our lives as he did as a leader at his synagogue, Kol Shofar, and as a founding member of the Marin Organizing Committee, a broad-based network of faith-based, non-profit, educational, labor, and civic organizations that identifies community needs and works to fulfill them.
Popski made the world a better place — and me a better man. It was thanks to him that the grudges against my first two fathers to which I clung so tenaciously were dropped in my later years. Popski was as interested in the lives of others as he was interesting in and of himself. With gentle nudging from my Mama Joan, Popski devoured parts of the world he might never have imagined treading upon. Unaccustomed to dogs as a child, Popski the Grand Dog Father, nonetheless played unbridled tug-of-war with our Lilly, the Boston terrier. She showed her gratitude by sitting on his shoe.
Yeah, maybe a part of Popski’s and my harmony stemmed from not sharing the DNA helix or life under the same roof when my hormones raged. But, I think there was more to it than that. Fathers and sons of choice are forged by the differences in each other and the life transitions to which they willingly expose themselves. A month before his 88th birthday, Popski said to me, “I’m done scaling the steep cliffs of accomplishment,” to which I replied. “You are the accomplishment.” He sighed and smiled.
I’ve known few men who’d avail themselves in this way.
Only one of them was my Popski.
R.I.P., Stephen J. Fierberg