Read Online Switched at Birth: The True Story of a Mother's Journey by Kathryn Kennish, ABC Family - Free Book Online
Authors: Kathryn Kennish, ABC Family
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No, not upset, angry bordering on furious.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s ripping that place apart,” I reported. “I mean literally—tearing it down.”
“We agreed she could do whatever she wanted,” he reminded me. “That was the deal.... Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.”
Of course I was having second thoughts. She was messing with my wallpaper. It was practically a declaration of war!
“We asked this woman we barely know to move in,” I recapped unnecessarily. “Maybe we should have tried some other way to get to know each other before sharing patio furniture.”
Sharing daughters was more than enough, I was realizing now.
John maintained his calm and looked at me evenly. “What do you want to do now—undo it? Honey, this is our life now. Wallpaper’s just the beginning.”
The scream I never screamed the night I’d awoken in a panic and offered Bay an exit clause was coming up again, beginning in the pit of my belly and begging to be released. But this time John’s words were the ones that threatened to break the sound barrier: Undo it.
Could I?
Could I send Regina packing just like that? Could I put in an emergency call to the wallpaper guys, begging them to speed over here and repair the destruction my boarder of less than a day had inflicted? Could I send that one-woman wrecking crew back to East Riverside?
Not if I wanted to keep Daphne here I couldn’t.
And so began the clash of the parenting styles. It was more of a cold war than an actual invasion, but make no mistake, the battle lines were drawn. Parenting is something that people hold very dear, something on which they pride themselves. It is intensely personal. “I’m forming my kid, here, so just step off, pal, and don’t you dare comment or judge or suggest.” Backseat drivers, armchair quarterbacks—they’re nothing compared to the “across-the-driveway coparent.” What Regina and I have since discovered, though, is that there are certain universal truths to being a parent. No matter what your methods (or what books you’ve read on the subject), there are fundamental truths that cross all the parenting lines—the ethnic, the regional, the socioeconomic: A parent loves, panics, protects, screws up, bribes, begs, screams, and kisses the boo-boos. Parenting is a privilege. It is a quest, a challenge. It is a lifetime of agreeing to disagree and of gritting your teeth and compromising.
Especially, we found out, when it comes to motorcycles.
You can’t talk about yourself as a parent unless you backpedal a little to consider how you yourself were parented.
My mother married a man “with potential,” and for many years, my father made a very comfortable living. I benefitted from his work ethic in the form of horseback riding lessons and a private tennis coach. Life, for the most part, was good.
During my junior year in high school, my father declared bankruptcy. This was a horrible blow. This terrible (and humiliating, to hear my mother tell it) reversal of fortune was the result of my father employing extremely poor judgment when it came to investing other people’s money. I never got the specifics, and frankly, I prefer it that way. At the time I wouldn’t have understood, and now, as an adult, I realize the specifics are not important. He was careless, and it cost him more than his business; it cost us our family.
This isn’t exactly classified information, but needless to say, it isn’t the kind of story one tends to trot out at dinner parties. “Leave it alone,” John likes to say, “it’s all in the past,” but as I am learning, as we are all learning, the past has a way of catching up with you. And by “catching up” I mean hunting you down and pouncing on you when you least expect it. Always, the past is just a step, or a page, or a blood test behind you. You need not fear it, but you must always bear in mind that the past is never quite as finished with you as you think you are
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s ripping that place apart,” I reported. “I mean literally—tearing it down.”
“We agreed she could do whatever she wanted,” he reminded me. “That was the deal.... Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.”
Of course I was having second thoughts. She was messing with my wallpaper. It was practically a declaration of war!
“We asked this woman we barely know to move in,” I recapped unnecessarily. “Maybe we should have tried some other way to get to know each other before sharing patio furniture.”
Sharing daughters was more than enough, I was realizing now.
John maintained his calm and looked at me evenly. “What do you want to do now—undo it? Honey, this is our life now. Wallpaper’s just the beginning.”
The scream I never screamed the night I’d awoken in a panic and offered Bay an exit clause was coming up again, beginning in the pit of my belly and begging to be released. But this time John’s words were the ones that threatened to break the sound barrier: Undo it.
Could I?
Could I send Regina packing just like that? Could I put in an emergency call to the wallpaper guys, begging them to speed over here and repair the destruction my boarder of less than a day had inflicted? Could I send that one-woman wrecking crew back to East Riverside?
Not if I wanted to keep Daphne here I couldn’t.
And so began the clash of the parenting styles. It was more of a cold war than an actual invasion, but make no mistake, the battle lines were drawn. Parenting is something that people hold very dear, something on which they pride themselves. It is intensely personal. “I’m forming my kid, here, so just step off, pal, and don’t you dare comment or judge or suggest.” Backseat drivers, armchair quarterbacks—they’re nothing compared to the “across-the-driveway coparent.” What Regina and I have since discovered, though, is that there are certain universal truths to being a parent. No matter what your methods (or what books you’ve read on the subject), there are fundamental truths that cross all the parenting lines—the ethnic, the regional, the socioeconomic: A parent loves, panics, protects, screws up, bribes, begs, screams, and kisses the boo-boos. Parenting is a privilege. It is a quest, a challenge. It is a lifetime of agreeing to disagree and of gritting your teeth and compromising.
Especially, we found out, when it comes to motorcycles.
You can’t talk about yourself as a parent unless you backpedal a little to consider how you yourself were parented.
My mother married a man “with potential,” and for many years, my father made a very comfortable living. I benefitted from his work ethic in the form of horseback riding lessons and a private tennis coach. Life, for the most part, was good.
During my junior year in high school, my father declared bankruptcy. This was a horrible blow. This terrible (and humiliating, to hear my mother tell it) reversal of fortune was the result of my father employing extremely poor judgment when it came to investing other people’s money. I never got the specifics, and frankly, I prefer it that way. At the time I wouldn’t have understood, and now, as an adult, I realize the specifics are not important. He was careless, and it cost him more than his business; it cost us our family.
This isn’t exactly classified information, but needless to say, it isn’t the kind of story one tends to trot out at dinner parties. “Leave it alone,” John likes to say, “it’s all in the past,” but as I am learning, as we are all learning, the past has a way of catching up with you. And by “catching up” I mean hunting you down and pouncing on you when you least expect it. Always, the past is just a step, or a page, or a blood test behind you. You need not fear it, but you must always bear in mind that the past is never quite as finished with you as you think you are
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