Going Rogue: An American Life (14 page)

Going Rogue

Palin was born. The world went away, and in a crystallizing stant, I knew my purpose.

As the nurse laid my son genrly in my arms, Todd and I laughed and cried together.
It
was a profuund moment, unexpected, overwhelming.
In
the space of a few minutes, we’d gone ftom being two individuals to being a family.

My nature-loving dad became a grandpa fur the first time that. spring day. He said he’d never forget the day because it’s when the geese return north to migrate. He liked Track’s name, but he mistakenly assumed it signified adventure.

“Track, right?” he said. “Like tracking an elephant?” I explained that no, it was because obviously we loved sports, and the baby was horn during the spring track season.

“What if he’d been born during wresrling season?” Dad asked.

“Would you have named him ‘Wrestle’?”

“No,” I said, smiling, “we’d have named him ‘Mat.”’

“And if he’d been born during basketball?”

“We could’ve called him ‘Court.”’

hockey?”

“What’s wrong with ‘Zamboni’?”

Todd and I had been counting down the days to meet our son, always referring to him as Track, so we were used to the sound of the name. It took us aback to realize that the name sounded odd to others. After so many people did a double take, we sighed and gave in, joking that his real name was “Track? Oooh … Track!”

Later, Track would come home from kindergarten and declare that he wanted a change. “I want to be named something Mom!”

“Okay, son, what should we change your name to?” I said. He turned his tiny face up, brown eyes blazing. “Like I told you, something
normal,
I want to be called ‘Colc’!”

SARAH

PALIN

“Normal” is a subjective concept.

Ftom the beginning, I was head ovet heels in love with him and convinced that I was the most important person in his world. He had my heart then (and now). Becoming a mom mellowed my drive towatd making it as a big-time sports reportet. I didn’t want to leave Ttack with anyone, so I only worked weekends at a couple of network affiliates in Anchorage. Heather babysat at her house near the studio and brought him by when I couldn’t stand another minure without inhaling the soft scent of his downy hair and baby skin.

When Track was just a couple of months old, rhe commercial fishing season began. Todd was low man on rhe BP totem pole, so he couldn’t take much rime off to work our leased site on the shores of Bristol Bay. We depended on the season’s catch as part of our an nual household income, so Dad and I, along with our fishing partner, Nick Timurphy, a full-blooded Eskimo, fished it withour our captain. Nick often spoke Yupik to me, especially when I was too slow picking fish.

“Amci! Amci!”
he’d yell. It meant “Hurry! Hurry!” Nick used to lIavor it up with Eskimo quasi-cussing. When I’d throw the wrong buoy dver the bow or stumble around trying to pull anchor, he’d shour,
“Alingnaafa, Sarah!”
It meant, “Oh, my goodness, Sarah!” Or so he claimed.

One summer (before Todd and I married) my hair was too long and my messy bangs kept gerring in the way out on the water, so Nick cut them with a pocketknife. Larer, he carved me an ivory ring in the shape of a seal. I used it for my wedding ring rhe day I eloped.

I headed to the Bay to work the site when Track was just ten weeks old. Mom came along to babysit. It broke my heart to leave him for whole days at a time while I was out on the water plucking salmon from the nets, bur I did whar I had to do.

Going Rogue

Just before Track was born, Todd and I moved to a small apartment in Wasilla, next door to our good friend Curtis Menard, Jr., who by now was a dentist like his dad. Curtis was like a brother to me. We asked him to be Track’s godfather. Todd and I shared one car, and we loved our little life together, though with the Slope and fishing schedule we still didn’t see each very much. I

was surprised by how much I loved motherhood. We desperately wanted another baby right away, so I was excited when I learned I was pregnant again. We were sure it was another boy, and we decided to call him Tad, a combination of Todd and Track. I loved the fact we had planned so well and that events were falling neatly into place in our well-ordered lives. Our babies would be a year apart, right on schedule. At the beginning of my second trimester, I went in for my monthly exam. Todd was on the Slope. He had always been good about leaving me short love notes before he left, bur as I drove to the doctor’s office, his latest replayed in my head because it had a special addendum: “I love you, Tad!”

At my exam, the doccor listened for the baby’s heattbeat. When she didn’t smile, I didn’t warty; she ·was known fat her mellow demeanor. But I noticed that she kept moving the sterhoscope around. And she didn’t hand it to me as doctors usually do, so the
expectant mother can listen to the sound of life.

“Let’s do a quick sonogram,” she said.

I agreed, eager to confirm that Tad was a boy-at to be surptised. We moved to another room, and I lay down on a sheet-covered table. The doctor spread gel on my belly and began sliding the transducer back and forth. I waited expectantly for the familiar
shoosh-shoosh-shoosh
sound of the baby’s beating heart.

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