7 min read

Dear Snackers,

In case you missed my stories this week, I asked any creators/writers/anyone with a good story to submit a piece to Soul Snacks for a chance to be featured. Doing this is an opportunity for me to showcase other women (or maybe a man). I will be back to writing it myself soon, but also am using this as a chance for me to focus more deeply on my book. This week’s piece is by Vanessa Glavinskas. I hope you love it as much as I did. You can find out more about her and her work at www.vanessaglavinskas.com

-Caitlin

What my stepdad’s dedication taught me about love

My only memory of my mom and dad’s marriage is the day my dad left. I can still picture my mom closing our back door, leaning against it, and sighing with relief. I was four, and they’d married because she was pregnant, and they thought it was the right thing to do.

Turns out, it wasn’t.

A year later, Jim started stopping by our two-bedroom apartment. My mom had met him at the software company where she was in the communications department, and he was an engineer. Aside from working together, they really couldn’t have been more different. Jim was analytical, practical, and reliable while my mom was free-spirited and routinely picked me up late from school.

Shortly after my 6th birthday, my mom and I moved into Jim’s three-bedroom house, and I tossed flower petals at their wedding. After they married, I saw my dad every Sunday at 1p.m. He’d usually take me to a movie and dinner, but sometimes we’d just walk around the mall or go to the zoo. He’d tell funny jokes and buy me anything I wanted.

He wasn’t anything like Jim. My new stepdad had rules and bedtimes. I couldn’t watch too much TV. I had to be in bed by 8 p.m. In the summertime, I remember lying in bed and counting the tiny painted flowers on my wallpaper as I listened to the neighborhood kids still playing outside.

I started to resent Jim.

Then puberty hit, and I was sure I hated him.

“I don’t have to listen to you! You’re not my real dad!” I’d scream. It was my go-to line. Though sometimes I’d switch it up with an “I hate you. You’re not my real dad.” And slam my door. In a feat of patience that I still don’t understand, Jim never got mad. More surprising, he kept helping me with things even after I’d been awful to him.

While my mom took evening classes for her master’s degree, or rehearsed with the local community theater group, he made us spaghetti and helped me with my math homework. He drove me to every orthodontist appointment, and later, every college visit. On one visit to the University of Illinois, I started to feel sick. Pull over right now kind of sick. But before he could stop, I threw up all over the inside of his BMW.

Jim loved his BMW. This was a car he’d never even let me eat a snack in so that it wouldn’t get dirty. But he didn’t get upset. We just stopped at the next town and bought supplies to clean up, along with some Pepto-Bismol. Once I was feeling better, we toured the school.

“I wish I had a Jim.”

I started hearing this refrain from friends sometime during my freshman year of college.

I really didn’t understand it at first. Who would wish for a strict stepdad who paired black dress socks with Hush Puppy shoes and shorts? I was embarrassed of him. His clothes. His constant lectures on how things worked. I was ready to be out of the house and away from his rules. I wanted to get as far away from Jim and my suburban hometown as I could. Plus, he wasn’t even my dad anymore. My mom divorced him the same year I left for college. It left our relationship in a sort of limbo.

A few months after I left for college, my new dorm friends started making plans with their moms for Mom’s weekend at the University of Illinois. But my mom called to say she couldn’t make it. I don’t remember why, but I remember how I felt. Alone.

Then guilt started to creep in. I had been pushing my parents away, and now I had pushed so much that my mom wasn’t coming to see me. When the weekend arrived and moms began parading through the hallways of our dorm, bearing care packages and taking their freshman out to eat, I sat by myself in my room. Then, to my surprise, Jim showed up.

We walked around campus and he took me and my friend, Rachel, out to eat. That weekend, Rachel said something that changed my relationship with Jim. “I like him,” she told me. “He’s not here to re-live his own college experience or to check up on you. He’s just here because he knew you needed him.”

No matter how much I had pushed him away, Jim loved me anyway. I started to understand why some of my friends wished they had a Jim. They longed for someone who was always there no matter what — even when they didn’t deserve it.

When I got married, I had to decide who would walk me down the aisle. My dad was still in my life, but our Sunday visits had ended when I turned 15 and he moved to Florida. We’d still talk on the phone but hadn’t seen each other in years.

I wrestled with the decision, but ultimately did what I felt was right. I asked my dad if he’d give the toast at the reception but allow Jim to walk me down the aisle. Understandably, my dad was hurt. Then he got angry. Then he refused to attend the wedding. When I called Jim crying, he told me to have my dad walk me down the aisle. It was ok with him, and it was important to my dad. But in that moment, I knew there was no one I wanted to give me away into my new married life but Jim.

When the day came, Jim did walk me down the aisle, and he also gave a toast at the reception.

My dad didn’t come.

At the reception, I took a moment to thank our guests for coming. When I thanked our parents, I said the following to Jim: And thank you for this beautiful party to my dad, Jim. You’ve not only been a parent to me, but a mentor, a teacher, a therapist, a travel buddy, a mechanic, and, most of all, a guardian angel.

Now Jim is known around our house as grandpa. One day, while I was working on a writing assignment from our home office, I glanced out the window and saw him lying on the sidewalk in front of our house while our daughter, Sofia, then 4, outlined his body with chalk and giggled. When I struggled to juggle Christmas shopping with meeting a tight deadline, he showed up in his snow pants, ready to build a snowman with Sofia to give me a break. When our daughter was 10, he bought her a Nikon camera to pass on his love of photography.

In 2014, my dad passed away from complications of diabetes. By that time, we had reconciled, and he met his granddaughter, but hurt defined the later years of our relationship. I still regret that.

I’m 46 now, and Jim hasn’t stopped showing up. Instead, he’s expanded his heart to include my daughter and husband. Having him in my life taught me that love isn’t only in biology — it’s in showing up. Even when it’s hard. Even when it’s not appreciated. Again and again.

So, to my dad, Jim, I love you. Thank you for showing up when I was six, and every day since.

• Vanessa Glavinskas is writer and award-winning journalist who has covered everything from hurricanes to hunger, but her most challenging assignment yet is raising her teen daughter.

• MAKE: I could eat a hot soup all winter long, at least two meals a day, and never get sick of it. Here’s 65 soup recipes for winter.

• DANCE: I danced to a few songs this week on this playlist from last week and people kept asking me what songs I was dancing to, so here is the Dancey Playlist once more in case you missed it!