Not Afraid of Life (18 page)

Mom sat behind the fake news desk and said, “Thanks, Seth, but after some thought I’ve decided not to do the segment we practiced. I’ve decided it might not be the best for the campaign. It seemed to just cross the line.”

Seth turned to Amy Poehler, who sat at the other side of the long news desk, and said, “Amy, would you like to do the governor’s bit?”

“Sure,” she said. “I guess I could give it a try. . . . I
think
I remember the words.”

Then she exploded from her seat and started a rap. It began,

My name is Sarah Palin you all know me

Vice Prezzy nominee of the G.O.P!

Gonna need your vote in the next election

Can I get a “what what” from the senior section?

It was absolutely hilarious. They had guys pretending to be Eskimos and one pretending to be my dad (complete with an Arctic Cat jacket and goatee!) dancing. He was such a huge contrast to my real tough-guy dad that we laughed and laughed.

Then Amy Poehler rapped, “All the mavericks in the house put your hands up! All the mavericks in the house put your hands up!”

When she said this, my mom put her hands in the air and did the “raise the roof” motion. The crowd went crazy.

This is one of the many times I thought,
My mom is the bomb!

Everyone across America—Democrats and Republicans alike—believed Mom absolutely rocked on
SNL.
Within days, however, people would turn on her once again.

Soon the press would report that my mom was demanding expensive designer clothing and accessories to wear while campaigning.

I was furious. How on earth could people blatantly lie like that?

I know it’s hard to believe that there are normal, everyday people in the world of politics, where everyone is so fake. But my mother wears sweatshirts and Carhartts and—unfortunately—SKECHERS Shape-ups in her normal life (okay, so Ben and I bought her those, but it’s still funny). Remember my earlier story? When I was a kid and was complaining at the Governor’s Mansion about Mom getting rid of all the luxuries other governors’ families had, Mom replied, “We’re not like other governors’ families, Bristol.”

Truer words had never been spoken. Our family wasn’t some redneck family that finally got a chance to spend big money on someone else’s dime. We’ve always shopped wisely and bought in bulk at Costco. In fact, when Mom stopped off at that Ohio Walmart, she even made headlines for buying generic diapers for Trig!

None of us ever asked to get nicer clothes. In fact, we would’ve preferred to wear our normal ones, which looked better and felt more comfortable. Mom was called a “pampered princess,” and public messages were sent for her to return her nylons! Talk about low class. Worse, no one came to defend us, so Mom decided to set the record straight herself at a Tampa rally.

“Those clothes, they are not my property,” she said. “Just like the lighting and staging and like everything else the RNC purchases. I’m not taking them with me. And today I’m wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage.”

And that was literally true. She had on a Dolce & Gabbana jacket she’d bought there, along with a pair of Paige jeans. (Paige Adams Geller is a Wasilla girl who’s now a big L.A. fashion designer!)

Ever hear of someone getting thrown under the bus? It’s even worse when your family is thrown under the
campaign
bus.

M
y grandma is very civic-minded and has worked the polling stations for as long as I can remember. Whenever Mom is a candidate, however, Grandma steps aside to make sure that there’s no appearance of wrongdoing. The polling areas have strict restrictions about politicking within a certain amount of distance from the voting booths. This means that you can’t carry signs, wear T-shirts, or even talk about your candidate within two hundred feet of the polls.

I’d never voted before, so I was excited to be able to cast my first vote for my mother for vice president of the United States. Grandma was so proud as we drove up to the State Elections Building. We were voting early so we could go to Arizona for the actual election night.

Grandma was about to burst, because you can’t talk to people once you get into the building, and she wanted to talk about how she was voting for her daughter. When we walked in, it was all business, except Grandma beamed from ear to ear.

The other people in the room noticed her—she’s well known and well liked in town—and there were a lot of winks and silent thumbs-up. It was a very proud moment for both of us.

A few days later, we were traveling all the way to Phoenix, where the GOP was having its victory party. That’s what they always call the election night results gatherings, no matter how unlikely victory appears to be!

Once again, everyone made the trip: Dad’s parents from Dillingham, Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt Heather, Aunt Molly, Uncle Chuck (and all of their families); my aunts and uncles on my dad’s side; Dad’s Iron Dog partner, Scott Davis, and his wife, Kris Perry, and her family; Meghan Stapleton (who’d been instrumental in helping to hold down the fort during the campaign); and of course all of the Palin kids except Track, who was in Iraq. We even brought some friends! (Levi wasn’t able to come, though, because this happened while he still had a job.)

It’s hard to understand how far away Alaska is, but these guys went to great effort and cost to get down to Phoenix. Some of them were from places in Alaska where you have to take a “puddle jumper” to get to Anchorage. Then it’s usually one or two flights to get all the way to Arizona. Needless to say, after such a whirlwind, it was good to be around people who really loved our family.

It’s probably unnecessary to write this, but we lost. Even though it was on a much larger scale, I felt the same way about her loss of the vice presidential race as I did about her losing the lieutenant governor race back in Alaska. The entire process was a long shot, God was in control of the outcome, and I was proud of her for trying.

Though it would’ve been absolutely amazing to win—and we all wanted a victory so badly—my family has always just put things in God’s hands. When John McCain gave his concession speech, I was in the audience trying to hide from view. By this time, I was so far along that I could barely travel. I definitely didn’t want to be in the national spotlight. But as I listened to Senator McCain’s gracious speech, I was moved by what our family had gone through in the past few months. Especially when he thanked my mother.

“I’m also, of course, very thankful to Governor Sarah Palin, one of the best campaigners I’ve ever seen and an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength. I thank her husband, Todd, and their five beautiful children for their tireless dedication to our cause, and the courage and grace they showed in the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. We can all look forward with great interest to her future service to Alaska, the Republican Party, and our country.”

Maybe it was just me, but when he thanked my mom it got the most applause of his entire speech. Mom stood behind him next to Dad with tears in her eyes.

The day after the election, Dad delayed our departure so we could soak up a little more of the Arizona sun. It was November, and we weren’t used to this wonderfully warm weather. We were at the Arizona Biltmore, so we sat outside by the luxurious pool, which was very relaxing. The palm trees hung over the pool, and I took a long look at them. Not many of those back in Wasilla! Mom dipped Trig’s toes in the water, Willow and I sat on the beach chairs, and—for the first time in weeks—everything was suddenly calm.

It wouldn’t last long.

Chapter Ten

Not Picture Perfect

I
f that b—ch comes over here, I’m going to kick her ass,” Levi’s sister Sadie screamed into the phone.

Levi had just told his sister we wanted to stop by her house to drop off Christmas presents for his family. I looked down at my pregnant belly and just laughed.

“Really?” I said in disbelief to Levi, who had just hung up the phone. “Your sister is going to beat me up while I’m carrying
her nephew
?”

Sadie had always been unusually close to her brother, which translated into jealousy toward me. For example, she was jealous when Levi got my name tattooed on his ring finger, and once went to Mexico for vacation and came back with a tattoo of his name on the inside of her wrist. It had hearts and angels’ wings around the word
Levi,
and she was only about fifteen or sixteen. On her other wrist, she has a tattoo of the word
Nonny,
which is what she calls her mother, with dolphins surrounding it. Once Levi and I got engaged, she referred to my mother as “mommy-in-law” and to Trig as her “baby brother.”

Sadie never liked me and always seemed jealous of my relationship with Levi. Good friends with Lanesia (who, you might recall, chased my friends and me around the parking lot trying to beat us up), she’d frequently invite her friend over to spend the night, seemingly to get Levi interested in her friend.

“What is up with them?” people sometimes would ask me, with suspicious looks on their faces.

I just shrugged.

B
ut I didn’t have time to think of that now. I had a stack of Christmas presents to deliver, and I wanted to get them to Levi’s house before I delivered that baby. “Are you gonna let your sister talk about me that way?”

“I can’t do anything about it,” he said.

Throughout my pregnancy, things between Levi and me had been pretty stable. He had a good job on the North Slope, he seemed to be dedicated to making things work out, and we were still on the “after campaign” high of having had a good, meaningful time together at the convention.

“I think I’ve changed my mind about the name,” I said. Though I loved the name Bentley, I was thinking of going with a
T
name, to go with Todd, Track, and Trig.

“What’s wrong with Bentley?” he asked. We’d been talking about “baby Bentley” for so long that it seemed weird to change it.

“I was thinking about . . . Tripp!”

Levi liked it, but he had already become emotionally invested in Bentley. In the end, though, “Tripp” won out. We also decided on middle names. Our friend Ben suggested Easton, a name I love because it’s a hockey brand! Also, I chose Mitchell, because it’s my dad’s middle name.

Even as the relationship between Levi and me was seemingly improving, though, my relationship with the Johnston family was going downhill and fast.

On the Thursday before my baby was due on December 14, Levi texted me.

You aren’t going to believe this. Guess who just raided my house and destroyed everything? My house is like a tornado. They think my mom sells drugs!

By this time, I’d already accepted some of Levi’s limitations, one of them being his loose grasp of the truth.

But that evening, it was no joking matter. The news confirmed what he had told me—though I doubt they “destroyed” his house—was actually true. The troopers had apparently been conducting an undercover drug investigation since the previous September and charged Levi’s mom, Sherry, with
six
felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

It started to all make sense. Maybe that’s where he got the money to buy me Coach bags and nice rings. I never really thought about where his mother got her money for her tanning bed visits, acrylic nails, or new cars with rims on them—probably from selling her prescription meds!

Apparently, the police had informants who bought OxyContin from her. The next day, she sold them the drugs again, and then she did it again in November. That last drug deal, in the Target parking lot in Wasilla, was even videotaped. Needless to say, based on the advice of her attorney Rex Butler, she pleaded guilty.

As I approached my due date, I was really trying to get rid of all the stress in my life, and this news didn’t help. How weird was it that one of my baby’s grandmothers would spend time in jail for dealing drugs, while the other might spend time in the Oval Office?

I tried to push this new information out of my head as I prepared for Tripp to arrive.

M
y due date of December 14 came and went. That was actually Levi’s mom’s birthday, and Sadie’s birthday was one week later.

“Well, you better not have Tripp on my birthday,” she told Levi and me impatiently. “Because that’s
my
day!”

Okay,
I thought sarcastically.
If I start having labor pains on that day, I’ll try to cross my legs and hold out until
after
midnight so I won’t steal your thunder.

Day after day passed, and it didn’t seem like we’d progressed at all.

During the last week of my pregnancy, I had to go to the doctor every day, because Tripp didn’t seem like he was interested in moving. I’d trudge to the appointments by myself, and sometimes Grandma would take me. (When I was tested for gestational diabetes, Grandma took me for all those tests too.)

Other than the near-constant appointments, I felt enormous and just stayed home as much as possible. Even some of my best friends—like Ben—didn’t see me when I was big at the end of my pregnancy.

On December 24, we decided to go to a Christmas Eve service. Track’s long-term girlfriend Britta’s father is a pastor at a Lutheran church in Wasilla. So I hauled my very pregnant body into the church and barely paid attention to the service. How could I? With every passing minute, I kept thinking that I could go into labor at any moment.

Finally, the doctors told me that if I didn’t go into labor, they were going to induce me.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to. On Friday I was at home with Mom, and my back was hurting so badly I couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Mom, if this isn’t labor, I don’t know what is!”

She packed up Trig, and the three of us drove to the hospital. Dad and Levi were at the cabin snowmachining—part of Dad’s continued effort to invest in what he thought would be a lifelong relationship. When Levi got the message that I was actually in labor, he immediately came to the hospital.

I didn’t have the easiest labor. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck three times, and it took a lot to get the little thing out into this world. But finally, two weeks past his due date, Tripp Easton Mitchell arrived on Saturday, December 27, at 5:30 in the morning, a healthy bouncing baby boy! He weighed seven pounds, three ounces. The doctors tried to hand Levi the scissors to “cut the cord,” but he backed away. He said it was too gross, an odd statement since he’s able to field dress a moose with one arm tied behind his back. Mom graciously took the scissors and performed the task for her grandson. It was the first time my parents had to step in and do something that the father really should’ve done, but it was far from the last.

The experience, of course, was the most amazing, life-defining moment for me. When the doctor laid Tripp in my arms, I knew this baby was not a mistake. Having sex outside of marriage was the mistake. But this baby? He was—and is—a blessing.

This very simple concept baffles the media. It was like we had two options: to say that premarital sex was morally acceptable and that Tripp was a wonderful new addition to the family, or to say that premarital sex was morally wrong and that having Tripp was a total disappointment. They seemed unable to understand that sometimes the most amazing blessings can emerge from your worst decisions. But isn’t that frequently the case? Don’t you see that in your own life? The Bible says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” I like the way the King James Bible chooses to start that with: “and we know . . .” It seems to point out how obvious the idea is.

Yet the media was always trying to define me as a hypocrite for having Tripp.

Think about that for just one second. When a professional athlete or Hollywood actor goes to rehab, it is considered “news.” When a famous person goes in and out of a clinic, over and over, we are encouraged when the person finally gets it all together. When he or she hits the talk-show circuit, it draws huge ratings. The individual is hailed as a hero. When a lifetime gang member leaves gang life and goes straight, vowing never to return, we applaud his or her courage and commitment. We put those people on TV, in movies, and across the airwaves so they can share their journey . . . hopefully to inspire others in another direction. We read their stories with hope that life can be different, for everyone. When people walk away from the bottle or pills or the needle, we celebrate their escape from a life of bondage and pain. They make a public commitment to never be involved again. We send them to schools all over the country so they can show their needle-scarred arms, telling stories of their hallucinations and depression, all in hopes of discouraging drug use. We are inspired by their stories of determination to never go back, even for a moment, to a life of addiction. These people are seen as great examples of courage. Heroes. Role models.

In fact, some of the best spokespeople, for any cause, are the people who have experienced the “other side” . . . and lived to tell about it. But when a twenty-year-old single mom like me wants to encourage people to wait for the appropriate time for sexual activity, the rules change. The media creates stories that don’t exist and passes them off as “news” or “truth.” Comedians attack me. “Journalists” malign me. For some reason, I’m seen as fair game.

You see, in the media, I’m not called a role model. They call me a hypocrite for wanting to encourage people to save sex for the marriage bed. People picket, protest, attack, and malign me in all forms of media. But why?

I don’t think it’s because they don’t like me. Truth is, they don’t even know me. I think if they could come into my home and we had a chance to talk over a cup of coffee, we’d probably hit it off.

So why am I labeled a hypocrite? Because the precious child I was holding at that moment in the hospital showed the beauty of life, even in less-than-ideal circumstances. When my family and I see beautiful Trig with his unmistakable Down syndrome characteristics, we see God’s handprint. Many other people see a baby they believe shouldn’t have been born. (And, as I mentioned, the vast majority of Down syndrome babies are aborted before they have a chance to draw breath.) So our very struggle through these issues offends critics. It causes them to think about the scars—emotionally and socially—that happen when people become sexually active. They don’t want to see the babies that are created or come to terms with the number of babies never born because the mother has made a horrific choice to end their lives.

As I sat there in the hospital with Mom on one side and Levi on the other, it was the picture of “less-than-ideal circumstances.” Levi would later tell his friends that being in the delivery room with me was “gross.” After I’d wasted more than two years of my life in that relationship, he’d run off with another. And then another.

Sadie came later that night. Though I didn’t want her to come—her threat to kick my ass a week ago still stung—I also didn’t want to keep her from seeing her nephew. I did, however, make sure my dad was there.

She held Tripp and stayed in the room maybe for five minutes before handing him back.

“My ride’s waiting,” she said, “so I gotta go.”

Again, it was a less-than-ideal circumstance, because people’s anticipation was tempered by the fact that I was so young and unmarried. So I didn’t tell anyone that I was in labor until after I’d delivered, until Tripp had already arrived. I didn’t send out a “mass text” to all the contacts in my phone, and I certainly didn’t post on Facebook that I’d delivered. Imagine how surprised everyone was when they showed up at the hospital thinking I was in labor and I already had the baby in my arms.

With everyone who visited, however, I said, “Don’t take any pictures! We’re only taking pictures with my camera.”

That might sound like a weird request from a proud mother.

However, as soon as it was confirmed that Levi and I were expecting a baby, the celebrity weekly magazines started a bidding war for the first photo. It might sound crass, but it’s a very common practice. The famous person negotiates the exact terms about how and when the baby is revealed. When the magazine publishes the photo, it drives sometimes millions of readers to either click through to their website or buy their magazines off the newsstands, so it benefits the magazine and the new arrival. Sometimes the celebrities donate the money to charity or sometimes they set up a college fund.

When I was first approached by representatives of a few magazines that expressed interest in the photo, they offered me so much money that it got my attention. After all, I wasn’t going to be like Michael Jackson and put a blanket over my child’s head in public. I planned on living a normal life with my sweet child. And whoever snapped a photo could sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars, or a magazine could send a reporter to stalk us and get one for free.

I decided to take the offer with a reputable magazine for Tripp’s first photo. Levi and I were so excited that the inevitable magazine photo would at least benefit Tripp and set him up for a very comfortable life. It was more than an apprentice electrician and a coffee barista could’ve made in decades. It could have bought a nice house for him to grow up in. (Or two nice houses.)

That’s
why I was so serious about no one taking photos and e-mailing them to friends. There would be time for showing off his sweet blond curly hair and his shockingly blue eyes. But now was a time to be discreet as we prepared to properly announce him to the world. I snapped candid photos on my phone to put in his baby book. I printed them out and handed them to Levi, with a stern warning: “Remember, don’t let anyone see them yet.” On the back, I wrote “Do not sell or distribute” just as a reminder. The first photo would appear in March!