Free Going Rogue: An American Life by Lynn Vincent, Sarah Palin

showed off her Native herirage, and Todd grabbed rhe birth cerrificate before I could get to it, declaring that his first daughter would be named “Bristol.” He proudly rold everyone we’d named her for the Bay he’d loved since childhood. I claimed that the name was the substitute for my plan to become a big-dog sportscaster in Bristol, Connecticut, home of ESPN. With Todd away, I was busy with two active little ones in our first house, which we purchased on Arnold Palmer Drive in a tidy little subdivision called Mission Hills. Track was the clingy one and always needed me in his sight, while Bristol was quite independent. As she grew she manifested her little mama’s heart by nurturing her siblings and cousins and always begging to babysit. One evening just before she turned eight, Bristol was camped out in my bed, as the kids often were when Todd was on the Slope. I was lying next to her reading when she rolled over and screwed her eyes down into a commanding stare.
    “You;’ she decreed, “are going to rent me a baby for my birthday.’” She was a neat freak and petfectionist. She potty trained herself at fourteen months. Meanwhile, Track was an adorable and rambunctious fireball who threw temper tantrums whenever I had to leave him, even in front of his cousins in Dillingham the • 57
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    fish were running and I had to ger out on the water. Bristol, on the other hand, would shoot her older brother a look of annoyance and calmly ask what time I’d be returning. Kind of an old soul, mature beyond her years, she grew up with an uncommon, work ethic and a great disdain for drama. She didn’t like gossip or wasting time.
    I’d left the TV sports desk when
    and Bristol were babies,
    pouring my energy into my kids. Like most moms, I also soughr an outlet to prevent stir craziness, and I still craved getting out to sweat. I found both on an exercise floor with a group of future best friends. Our kids would grow up together, and the group of us gals would support each other through tragedy and triumph, divorces and deaths, new births and birthdays. And politics. I love my girlfriends, the “Elite Six” as one of them facetiously dubbed us, because we’re the antithesis of “elite”-a diverse group of two Democrats, two Republicans, one Independent, and one who still won’t tell us what she is. Our friendship has spanned twO decades now. We can talk about everything and we don’t scream at each other about anything, especially not politics.
    I also kept my hand in journalism, working a couple of days a week at the Frontiersman as a proofreader and submitting a sports column every once in a while. So I didn’t suffer too much guilt over leaving the kids for a few hours.
    Track grew into a daredevil who was obsessed with sports. He started playing hockey as soon as he learned to walk, and I’d spend hours with him in the hallway. I’d read the newspaper from beginning to end while firing rolled-up balls of duct tape at him, with him deflecting them like an NHL goalie. He never tired of it.
    Obviously, the older he got, the less dependent he was. On his first day of school, with the apron strings fraying a bit, I kicked myselffor ever having been annoyed with his clingy “Mom! Watch
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    me! Watch me, please!” moments. I thought I’d seen every bike trick and skateboard flip ever attempted and sometimes wondered why he needed me to see yet anothet one. Now, if I had it to do over, I’d stop every
    he asked me to, give him my full attention, and cheer as if it were the first time. On Good Friday, March 24, 1989, I baked a cake for Dad·s fiftyfirst birthday. It started out a great day, but turned into one of those “where were you when …” moments. When Ronald Reagan was shot, I heard about it over the intercom upstairs in the library at Wasilla High; when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, was watching it on TV while standing in my dorm room at VI. On this