Going Rogue: An American Life (51 page)

Going Rogue

dulging in a little denial. If I juSt steeled myself, I thought on some wishful level, if I just took the medicine straight, maybe God would teward my guts with good news.

CBJ hesitated, then said, “No … I teally think you need to come out here.”

“Cathy, I’ve got
so
much to do here today. It’s okay … whatever it is, it’s fine, just go ahead and tell me now.”

“Okay,” she said softly. “This child will be born with Down syndrome-“

“I’m coming to Wasilla,” I interrupted and hung up the phone. I was shocked beyond words. Shocked that this was happening. How could God have done this? Obviously He knew Heather had a special needs child. Didn’t He think that was enough challenge for one family?

I drove the forry-five minutes to Wasilla gritting my teeth.
not going to cry. I’m not going to cry.

My stoicism in difficult times had always bugged and puzzled my friends and family. Bristol once asked, “Mom, why don’t you ever cry? The rest of us are watching some movie, crying our eyes OUt, you’re just sitting there.” Shoot, my mom used to cry during the “Mean Joe Green” Coca-Cola commercials!

Though I didn’t tell Bristol this, I choke up all the time-at

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” at any military event, seeing newborn babies-but secretly, where no one can see. Maybe it was because I’d grown up hunting and fishing with the guys, throwing elbows on the basketball court. Even when my heart was breaking on the inside, I just nevet wanted to seem weak. Now, as I pressed the accelerator past the speed limit toward Wasilla, my eyes stayed dry and my mind raced.

Maybe the test is wrong.

Maybe my

are switched

somebody else.

Maybe it’s a mistake. God.
. .
are you listening?

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SARAH

PALIN

But when I got to CBJ’s office, she showed me the pictures. There was an extra copy of chromosome 21.

“It’s a boy,” she said.

“A boy? You’re sure? Thank you, God.” For me, that was a glimmer of light, and I let ir warm me as CBJ walked out of her office and returned with a book for expectant parents of babies with Down syndrome. I thanked her and laid it in my lap, unopened. I just wasn’t ready; my sisrers were the ones who could handle this, not me. Did I have enough love and compassion in me to do this? Don’t you have to be wired a little differently to be gifted with the ability to raise a special needs child, a child who isn’t “perfect” in the eyes of society? I didn’t know if I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking these things.

I read that almost 90 percent of Down syndrome babies are aborted-so wasn’t that a message that this is not only a lessthan-ideal circumstance but that it is .virtually
impossible
to deal with? Now, just a couple of hours into this new world, I could not get my arms or heart around it. That
Ieeting thought descended on me again, not a considerationp>

much as a sudden understanding of why people would grasp at a quick “solution,” a way to make the “problem” just go away. But again, I had to hold on to that seed of faith.

Todd finally returned a few days later. He plopped down on the bed, still in his winter coat. I handed him the sonogram pictures, aod that’s when the dam broke. I could let my guard down.

“It’s a boy,” I said between the tears. “It’s definitely a boy.” He looked up at me, and
his
eyes filled with tears. “See, Sarah?

God knows what He’s doing! This is great.”

I stood beside the bed. I didn’t know how to say it any other way but straight. “The baby has Down syndrome.”

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Going

Todd didn’t speak. I temember him lying back on the bed, holding the sonogram pictures and Bipping thtough them. He’d look at one, put it in the back of the stack, look at the next. Over and over, silently, as though looking for answers. Finally I sat down next to him. In his subdued way, he did not offer a reaction. So I had ro ask him. “Well … what do you think?”

“How can they tell?” he asked quietly.

they sure?”

“Yes. There’s an extra chromosome.”

He set the pictures aside and turned his face toward

“I’m

happy, and I’m sad,” he said.

I thought it was pretty perfect the way he said that, because that’s the way it was. That’s the way I felt, too. Todd said, “It’s going to be okay.”

I asked if he had the same question I had: “Why us?” He looked genuinely surprised by my question and responded calmly, “Why not us?”

From that moment on, Todd never seemed to worry about it. Instead, he’d think out loud, wondering what the baby’s gifts would be. “What will he want to do?” he wondered. “Will he want to tinker with me in the garage? Will he want to ride on the four-wheeler and drive the skiff? I’m going co build him a buoy swing. I bet he’ll love to
By
with me.” He started asking other people with special needs children a lot ofquestions: What your kid do? Does he play any sports?

Heather and her husband, Kurt, had a nephew wirh Down syndrome, in Kurt’s hometown in North Dakota, who was about eleven years old and played Little League baseball on a “regular” team. The whole town loved this little kid. Tndd asked about him. Todd later saw his cousin, who had Down syndrome, at a hockey game; he was now thirty-two, loving life and having a ball cheering on the Aces.

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