Welcoming Marcus to the world: First-time Island mom reflects on what she wants for her child

The timing was just about perfect. Marcus was born on Dec. 5, 2019 to Kristina Martin Majdisova and Billy Martin McGayhey and Ms. Martin Majdisova’s mother arrived from Slovakia two weeks later. She stayed three weeks, helping out caring for her newest grandchild, and left in the middle of January. 

If the baby had come later, or her mother had delayed, COVID-19 would have made it impossible for her to enter the United States.

Administrative assistant to the Town Board and Supervisor Gerry Siller, as well as clerk to several Town committees, Ms. Martin Majdisova had just returned to Town Hall after two months of working from home, but after one week in the office, “The world shut down,” she said, “and I was back at the home office.” 

In the early lockdown days of the pandemic, it was not only busy, but a whirlwind, as Town employees had to reinvent the government, setting up new systems of communication, providing services remotely and supplying up-to-date information on how to contend with a public health emergency.

But again, even with an unexpected increase in work, timing worked in the first-time mother’s favor. “That was the age when I could still work with Marcus napping or just lying next to me,” she said. “Now, when he’s 2-and-a-half, that would be impossible. I didn’t miss any of Marcus’s milestones. We had a very intense family time the first year of his life, and we loved every minute of it.”

She doesn’t forget the difficulties, some severe, that the pandemic imposed on her family of three, such as Billy losing his job and not being able to socialize with their many friends, but she also remembers the lockdown as “a gift of time. Three months with this little person without interruption, learning and witnessing everything — when he rolled over, when he ate solids. For us, it flew by like nothing. We had it super-sweet. We went for walks in Dering Harbor every day. I only used a mask once a week, going to the grocery store.”

She and her husband also had the advantage of family on the Island to help in the early days of Marcus’s life. Ms. Martin Majdisova’ older sister is Lydia Martinez Majdisova, who with her husband Pepe own and operate Stars Café. “She’s like a second mother to me and now to Marcus,” she said, noting that her son spends at least one day a week with Lydia and Pepe.

As Reporter feature writer Charity Robey has written, Ms. Martin Majdisova started coming from Slovakia summers to work with Lydia and Pepe starting in 2006. One of the Café’s regulars was Billy Martin McGayhey, and by the time she returned in the summer of 2012, they were in love. 

“It was a turning point,” she said. “I realized I had everything that I needed here. My friends, my family, my future husband. I went home and then came back with all my life in two suitcases on Dec. 12, 2012.” 

And in 2019, just a few weeks before Marcus was born, she became a naturalized American citizen, a banner day for the young woman who had studied law in Slovakia and had written her senior thesis on the U.S. Constitution. 

She treasures the values that she was raised with, she said, noting that her family — she’s one of four children — was and is “super close. My mom growing up was everything to us. Loving, caring, fun. She told us we could come to her and talk about anything. And we did. She was always there for us.”

She and her husband will strive for the same kind of openness in raising Marcus, she said, considering the burdens many parents put on their children by not having an open-door policy to discuss issues that concern every child, things that some parents consider taboo. “I don’t want him to ever be afraid to come to us,” she said.

Like all parents, she’s concerned about raising a child in a world that seems to be changing daily at warp speed. “I don’t envy kids, especially teenagers nowadays,” she said, adding that growing up at any time has pressures, “but add social media into the mix and it can be a pathway to a disaster.”

She was in high school and college when the social media boom was born, and sees how it was corrupted after an idealistic beginning. “The purpose was to connect, and it was great,” she said. “Now, I feel it divides more than it connects. Plus, all alternative media, hoaxes and misinformation spreading at the speed of light. It’s hard to find a true news source for an adult, forget a 13-to-15-year-old child. It’s rougher times mentally, for sure.”

But she knows the kind of person she wants Marcus to be. She and her husband named him for Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, writer and philosopher. “He was in wars but never started one,” Ms. Martin Majdisova said. “He was stoic, intelligent, educated and calm.”

She also has the lessons handed down by her mother, she said, noting that her name, Veira, means “Hope” in her native language.