Read Online Going Rogue: An American Life by Lynn Vincent, Sarah Palin - Free Book Online Page A

techniques, when what I really wanted to do was scream bloody murder and beg for drugs. Blessed Mother ofJesus, I finally got them!
    The delivery room was chaos: the doctor and nurses bustling around; Todd and my mom saying sweet, soothing, irritating things; my motherin-law angling for a better shot with a video camera that I cursed evety time she aimed it.
    Many hours later, though, chaos evaporated when Track CJ
    .
    .

    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