Read Online Switched at Birth: The True Story of a Mother's Journey by Kathryn Kennish, ABC Family - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kathryn Kennish, ABC Family
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with it.
The thing is, there are events in our lives that impact us, and the bankruptcy issue and the divorce that followed it are two things that impacted me greatly.
When my parents divorced, I found myself bouncing back and forth between them, not only on alternate weekends, but in terms of sympathy. I would feel nothing but heartache for my mother when I’d find her sitting alone in the big master bedroom, crying into my father’s empty dresser drawers. And I would feel thoroughly awful for my poor, lonely father when I would visit him and find him eating cold beans out of a can (because his was part of a generation of men who had never been taught to cook). The thing I will never forgive either of them for is that they ignored my own sadness and used me as artillery against each other. They were more concerned with “winning” than with how their behavior made me feel.
Their hostility came to a head when it was time for me to attend the senior prom. I expected to go with the boy I’d been “keeping company with” (which is what my mother called it, as though her daughter was Scarlett O’Hara and not Katie Tamblyn). The boy’s name was Trevor Anderson. He had lent me his varsity jacket one crisp, autumn day and then never asked for it back, which officially made us a couple. But when spring came, Trevor broke my heart by asking Linda DeCapella to the prom instead of me. Well, Linda DeCapella put out; I didn’t.
My mother was as crestfallen as I was, possibly more. Trevor was husband material in her opinion (she pointed this out even though I was only a high school senior), and I should have found a way to keep my hooks in him without stooping to Ms. DeCapella’s level.
I wish that just once she’d indicated to me that she saw Trevor’s breaking up with me as his loss, not mine.
My father did. “It’s his loss, Katie,” he said when I told him the whole horrible story during my court-sanctioned visit that weekend. “That boy will be kicking himself one day, you mark my words.”
It’s his loss, Katie. To this day, I remember that as one of the sweetest things my father ever said to me.
My mother dealt with the situation not by attempting to comfort me but by flipping through my school yearbook, in search of an acceptable replacement prom date for me. Do you think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Her rationale was that I was going to have to work quickly if I had any hopes of securing a boy from one of the “better” families. She’d narrowed it down to Jimmy Hartley, from up the street (she knew his mother from bridge club), and Robert M. Dennison III, our class treasurer who was a legacy at Purdue.
I casually suggested that I might like to go to prom with a boy from my European history class, Javier Menendez, who had moved to town recently from the Bronx, New York. As you might imagine, my mother did not see Javier as a viable option, and she told me so.
She also told me that I could forget about my father coming to the house on prom night to see me in my dress and pose for photos with me in front of the fireplace.
“He’s not welcome here,” she said, turning another page in the yearbook in case she’d missed anyone who might prove to be more suitable than Robbie or Jim.
“That’s not fair,” I told her. “You divorced him. I didn’t.”
But I knew it had nothing to do with fairness. My mother was in the enviable position of having me on her home turf, and forbidding my father to come see me all dressed up and beaming beside my handsome date (whoever he turned out to be) was the checkmate move she’d been waiting for. Prom happened once in a lifetime and she was going to deprive him of being a part of it, just because she could.
How I felt about it, apparently, didn’t matter. I would have expressed my feelings, but that was not something my mother encouraged.
In the end I went to the dance with Robbie Dennison and (Bay will no doubt roll her eyes here, but I think Daphne will
The thing is, there are events in our lives that impact us, and the bankruptcy issue and the divorce that followed it are two things that impacted me greatly.
When my parents divorced, I found myself bouncing back and forth between them, not only on alternate weekends, but in terms of sympathy. I would feel nothing but heartache for my mother when I’d find her sitting alone in the big master bedroom, crying into my father’s empty dresser drawers. And I would feel thoroughly awful for my poor, lonely father when I would visit him and find him eating cold beans out of a can (because his was part of a generation of men who had never been taught to cook). The thing I will never forgive either of them for is that they ignored my own sadness and used me as artillery against each other. They were more concerned with “winning” than with how their behavior made me feel.
Their hostility came to a head when it was time for me to attend the senior prom. I expected to go with the boy I’d been “keeping company with” (which is what my mother called it, as though her daughter was Scarlett O’Hara and not Katie Tamblyn). The boy’s name was Trevor Anderson. He had lent me his varsity jacket one crisp, autumn day and then never asked for it back, which officially made us a couple. But when spring came, Trevor broke my heart by asking Linda DeCapella to the prom instead of me. Well, Linda DeCapella put out; I didn’t.
My mother was as crestfallen as I was, possibly more. Trevor was husband material in her opinion (she pointed this out even though I was only a high school senior), and I should have found a way to keep my hooks in him without stooping to Ms. DeCapella’s level.
I wish that just once she’d indicated to me that she saw Trevor’s breaking up with me as his loss, not mine.
My father did. “It’s his loss, Katie,” he said when I told him the whole horrible story during my court-sanctioned visit that weekend. “That boy will be kicking himself one day, you mark my words.”
It’s his loss, Katie. To this day, I remember that as one of the sweetest things my father ever said to me.
My mother dealt with the situation not by attempting to comfort me but by flipping through my school yearbook, in search of an acceptable replacement prom date for me. Do you think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Her rationale was that I was going to have to work quickly if I had any hopes of securing a boy from one of the “better” families. She’d narrowed it down to Jimmy Hartley, from up the street (she knew his mother from bridge club), and Robert M. Dennison III, our class treasurer who was a legacy at Purdue.
I casually suggested that I might like to go to prom with a boy from my European history class, Javier Menendez, who had moved to town recently from the Bronx, New York. As you might imagine, my mother did not see Javier as a viable option, and she told me so.
She also told me that I could forget about my father coming to the house on prom night to see me in my dress and pose for photos with me in front of the fireplace.
“He’s not welcome here,” she said, turning another page in the yearbook in case she’d missed anyone who might prove to be more suitable than Robbie or Jim.
“That’s not fair,” I told her. “You divorced him. I didn’t.”
But I knew it had nothing to do with fairness. My mother was in the enviable position of having me on her home turf, and forbidding my father to come see me all dressed up and beaming beside my handsome date (whoever he turned out to be) was the checkmate move she’d been waiting for. Prom happened once in a lifetime and she was going to deprive him of being a part of it, just because she could.
How I felt about it, apparently, didn’t matter. I would have expressed my feelings, but that was not something my mother encouraged.
In the end I went to the dance with Robbie Dennison and (Bay will no doubt roll her eyes here, but I think Daphne will
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