Marc

People who have known me for a long time are surprised when I tell them that I have three children – Marc, who was 29 last Thursday, Victoria (15) and Shane (13). You can see the puzzled furrow of their brow, the question in their eyes as they try to recall seeing me pregnant 29 years ago! 

I was not. For Marc is really my stepson. He moved from Trinidad to Jamaica when his father and I married. He was then a shy, gangly 8 year old. Today he is a dazzingly handsome, 6ft 4in hunk of a man. And my son.

I have a very special place in my heart for Marc. He is as much “mine” as Victoria and Shane, my birth children, are. We share a very special bond that has grown warmer and closer as the years have trundled by. Ours is not the step relationship of Aesop’s fables (although I am sure that there may have been a moment or two when Marc was growing up when he DID think I was the wicked stepmother). It is a love born of a situation in which we both found ourselves “by accident”. It is a relationship held by the glue of unconditional love, of a choice to love as mother/son.

I am proud of Marc and the man he has become. My mother nicknamed him the “gentle giant”, for despite his size, he is one of the sweetest, most caring and considerate persons you will ever meet. He had a warm, loving relationship with my parents. I recall that on the day before my mother passed she gently and sweetly whispered to him on the telephone “Thank you Marc for all the joy you brought to my life”. That joy had been fully expressed when he surprised her with an unexpected (by her only – we all knew the surprise he had planned) appearance at her 90th birthday party. Even today, 10 years after Marc graduated from Wolmer’s High School for Boys, teachers remember him “Ah Marc McKenzie” they say with a sigh and a sweet, reflective smile.

I would like to take credit for this young man, but I know there are many people who have contributed to this wonderful human being being wonderful – his father, birthmother, grandparents, extended family, teachers, coaches and a host of others. Fundamentally though, Marc is who he is because of the choices he has made to remember who he is – a magnificent spirit, in the image and likeness of God.

Today, I celebrate my son Marc, and all the amazingly wonderful young men like him – there are a lot more of them out there than we think!