It must have been a Friday evening because I remember doing absolutely nothing afterward. That unexpected trip became the entire weekend.
Mark loaded my brother and me into the car and drove us to the forerunner of Target. I think it was called Ayr-Way or Wicks.
It was unusual because Mom didn’t come with us, and he wouldn’t tell us where we were going or why. When we arrived, he led us to the very back of the store where shelves were stacked with whatever it was he’d come to buy.
I remember signs advertising the price: $199.
In 1982, to my eight-year-old mind, that might as well have been a million dollars.
He bought one, took us home, and connected it to the television.
From the moment that little spaceship began rotating across the screen responding to the commands from the controller in my hand, my life was changed. It became an obsession and it was an Atari 2600.
That was Mark.
There were so many moments like that over the years. Little surprises here and there, like the VHS player that he rented along with Raiders of the Lost Ark…the cause of another lost weekend.
My mom and my stepdad weren’t affluent people. Looking back, they were probably struggling more than my brother and I ever realized.
It’s amazing to me now how hard he tried when we gave him so little in return. We probably made those first years of his marriage to my mom absolutely miserable.
But he just kept creating magic.
One day it was an Atari. Another time it was ATVs or slot car racetracks. Things we never even thought to ask for would suddenly appear, like Honda Elite mopeds.
Then there were the Christmas mornings that seemed impossible.
One year we walked into the living room to find the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier—the U.S.S. Flagg—completely assembled, stocked with our own action figures, and ready for battle.
The thing was over eight feet long.
It must have taken him the entire night to put together.
We never asked for it. Never expected it. He simply made it happen.
I also remember when he took an over-the-road trucking job with one of his buddies. After one of his first trips, he came home excited because he’d finally made some decent money.
To celebrate, he took us to Children’s Palace, a toy store that seemed to contain everything a kid could imagine.
He told us we could each pick anything we wanted.
I’m pretty sure he secretly hoped we’d choose one of the elaborate scale-model tractor-trailer rigs to celebrate his new career.
Instead, I picked Castle Grayskull from He-Man. I honestly can’t remember what my brother chose, but knowing him, it was probably a BB gun or a survival knife.
I’m fairly certain we disappointed him a little by not choosing the trucks. The truth is, we probably disappointed him a lot back then.
If my brother and I weren’t trying to kill each other, we were probably breaking something, stealing something, smoking something, or killing something somewhere. And if we weren’t doing that, we were probably just being disrespectful little jerks.
We were not ideal children.
But he stayed.
He absorbed all of the chaos we created and never seemed to resent us for it. Even today, I’ve never heard him complain about those years.
Instead he tells the story of the first time he saw my mom.
He says she was pulling a little red Radio Flyer wagon with two scruffy boys riding inside.
“I saw your mom pulling that wagon,” he’ll say with a grin, “and I knew she was the one for me”, despite the extra luggage she was dragging along.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve spent a lot of time looking back on those years.
There were plenty of difficult moments. Plenty of nonsense. Plenty of reasons for someone to walk away.
Instead, Mark kept showing up.
I realize now that many of the best memories from my childhood were created by a man who was simply trying to be our dad—even when we weren’t ready to let him.
I’m grateful we never succeeded in driving him away.
Before Mark, my mom chose a couple of less than ideal men. Had he left, there easily could have been more of them and life may have been drastically different.
Instead, she found the right man for herself and for us.
Today we don’t always see eye to eye on ideas like religion or politics, but we do agree on the importance of family and the memories we make together.
I know that he is proud of the men we became, even when our choices seemed unreasonable to him.
And I know that we’re proud to call him our dad… and our friend.
Happy Birthday, Mark and Happy Father’s Day too!
You left a mark on our lives long before any of us realized it.