My Brother, Mark, with Darcy, PawPaw, 2022
On June 30, 1959, I was eleven and a half years old. I answered the telephone in our kitchen and took a call from Dr. King, my mother’s ob-gyn who told me I now had a little brother. I was ecstatic. After two sisters, I had been hoping, and yes praying (I was a good Catholic boy back then), for a brother.
I talked my mother, and the priest, into letting me be Mark’s Godfather, even though I wasn’t really old enough. Hell, he was a big baby and I was hardly strong enough to hold him during the service.
There are years between my brother and me. It often seems we are of different generation. Our two sisters, and our parents, have all passed so Mark and I are what we have left of immediate family.
The rest of the family worried about my brother when he was growing up. It was the sixties and seventies, lots of temptations, and Mark was interested in all of them. But he found his path. He graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston and enjoyed a long career as a much-loved music teacher in Montgomery County Schools in Maryland, where he helped guide a few world-class guitar players.
He married Marisa and they had two daughters, Sammy and Lily.
Mark recently retired from teaching and he and Marisa sold their house in Frederick, Maryland, and bought a place on the Delaware shore on the Delmarva Peninsula. Mark likes to fish. He bought a small boat. I think my one Godfather type action with him was I took him camping and fishing for the first time.
We leave tomorrow for a few days with Mark and Marisa at their new home. We plan to lay on the beach, eat fish and crabs, walk the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD, and generally relax. In a complete reversal of the Godparent roles, Mark will take me fishing on his boat and we’ll hopefully come back with something to eat.