Not Afraid of Life Page 2

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  After Dad and Mom got married, they formed a very good life for themselves.

  In the early 1970s, Dad purchased a limited-entry permit from his grandpa in Dillingham, which has the best salmon runs in the world. Just like taxicab medallions in New York City, there are only a certain number of permits out there. And Dad got the best spots to catch salmon in Bristol Bay because they’re farther north than the other areas. He always got to take the first shot on the fish coming south, which meant he’d be able to bring more fish in. This job—though lucrative—was seasonal. The salmon runs last only four weeks per year, and he needed to stretch that money throughout the year as he worked other jobs.

  After Mom and Dad married in 1988, however, my father landed a job in the North Slope oil fields. Being a “sloper” might not mean anything to you in the lower forty-eight, but around Wasilla it means good money, health insurance, and a challenging job that never gets boring. Alaska’s North Slope oil and gas industry is not for everyone. But for people who aren’t afraid of long hours or harsh, remote environments, these jobs are highly valued. When my dad got a job working for $14 per hour as a production operator at Prudhoe Bay, my mother was thrilled and maybe a little apprehensive. Many marriages don’t survive the sloper schedule and the separation. However, Mom was working two jobs (and Dad was working two), so the idea of the better-paying Slope job was too appealing to pass up. So my parents placed his career—and their marriage—in God’s hands.

  This was beginning to become a recurring theme in their lives.

  Being a sloper meant that every week Dad would drive to Anchorage. There, he’d get on a 737 jet to land in the unfortunately named area of Deadhorse, where he’d then get on a shuttle to get to Prudhoe Bay. He slept in a dormitory-style camp building with other workers and ate at a cafeteria.

  During the week he was working, he’d have long days (usually twelve hours), which resulted in lots of overtime. His facility separated water from crude oil and gas before sending the oil down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the water back into the ground. He loved the job in spite of the fact that it would sometimes be seventy below zero up there.

  In spite of their time apart, they were excited about his new job and about how it would help create a nice future for them as a newly married couple. But, in 1989, their lives—and family—expanded, when Mom gave birth to her first son, Track.

  Yes, Track.

  His arrival began the long and complicated explanations about how my parents named him—and all of their future children. If you’re wondering, Track is so named because he was born during spring track season and my folks loved sports. Seventeen months later, they named me Bristol, but told everyone different reasons for my name. Apparently, Dad grabbed the birth certificate and wrote in my name before Mom could get to it. He told everyone I was named after Bristol Bay—where he had fished since he was a kid—but Mom told everyone I was named after Bristol, Connecticut, home of ESPN, where she had hoped one day to be a sportscaster. Again, I’ll have to explain this over and over for the rest of my life, but I like my name because it’s very Alaska oriented (or Connecticut oriented, depending on who you believe). I was born on October 18, 1990, Alaska Day, and showcased my native roots with dark hair and eyes.

  We lived in a nice three-bedroom house built on the far western boundary of our town. It was located right in the center of downtown, on Wasilla Lake, directly across from the highway. As a toddler, I began showing the same personality that would follow me throughout life. I was a complete perfectionist. My mom says I even potty trained myself at fourteen months, a shocking fact I only now appreciate as a mother. I also pretended to speak fluent Spanish, figuring my brother couldn’t understand Spanish anyway, so it was a pretty good trick. Plus, I had an imaginary friend I called “Dudda.”

  But mostly, I had a very nurturing personality and loved helping babysit all of my cousins and younger siblings. And speaking of siblings, they kept coming. Willow was born when I was four, during the salmon run. That meant that Dad was in Dillingham when Mom went into labor, and he missed her arrival into this world by a few hours! Though Mom and Dad were disappointed, making a living in Alaska sometimes requires a lot of travel, hard choices, and time apart.

  Willow’s name came from a small community that began in 1897 when miners discovered gold on Willow Creek. Also, she was named after Willow Bay, one of my mother’s favorite sports reporters. Because we were four years apart, we were each other’s best friends and worst enemies, depending on the day.

  While Mom took care of small kids, she filled in as a weekend sports anchor in Anchorage, freelanced for the local paper, and did other odd jobs. In 1992, she ran for city council and was elected to two terms. She helped develop our town’s infrastructure, focused on making the politicians fiscally responsible, and ensured that the citizens knew what was going on in the government.

  Of course, this was when the direction of her life was set into motion, but we didn’t know that then. She gave herself to the responsibilities completely, learned what concerns the citizens of Wasilla had, memorized all the lines in the budget, and took great care not to spend the taxpayers’ money too casually. While she fulfilled her duties in “Seat E,” she still was simply Mom. Once, she even breast-fed Willow while taping a radio segment on local politics!

  I was too young to really be aware of the fact that Mom was “in politics.” We just knew she was working for something she believed in.

  As Mom learned all the ins and outs of city government however, she started having sharp differences of opinion with the local mayor. He actually wanted to force some of the outer areas of the Mat-Su Borough to become a part of the city, to broaden the tax base and become more prominent . . . even though those outside areas didn’t want to be governed by a city government. Mom has always held the same positions that revolved around small government and maximizing individual freedom, and she believed Wasilla would be better off if the mayor’s vision of the future was never realized.

  While my mom was off making a difference in our town politically, we had some great bonding time with Dad. From the moment I was little, I followed in my dad’s footsteps—or his sled tracks?—and rode on a snowmachine. Yes, in Alaska, we call those motorized snow vehicles “snowmachines,” though I understand people in the lower forty-eight call them snowmobiles. I think the difference might have to do with the fact that Alaskans consider these sleds as more of a necessity, and not just arctic toys. Many people who don’t have cars have snowmachines, and all kinds of people use them for daily commuting to and from the office. Plus, “snowmobile” just sounds weird. (Really!)

  Arctic Cat is the manufacturer of my favorite snowmachines . . . and I’m not just saying that because they sponsor my dad in the Iron Dog! They make smaller snowmachines for kids (called “kitty cats,” get it?) that limit the speed and allow little three- to five-year-olds to have their own fun on the snow. I had a little 120, which is what my son, Tripp, has now, and my brother and I rode all over the lake. Sometimes Track would even race in “kitty cat” races, in which racers go in a circle around cones. I loved to watch Track do that, and once or twice I participated in my own races. I never won! But even though we learned how to ride snowmachines early on, we still had mishaps. Once my cousin Payton and I were riding outside Dad’s Polaris store. He leaned out the door and told us to knock it off, advice we promptly ignored. That’s when Payton rode right into Dad’s big old green monster truck, denting it with his helmet!

  Another time when I was older, we went on a family ride out to a cabin. We rode all in a row—like ducks—and I was the last one in the row. At first, I was having so much fun . . . looking through the goggles at the big snow-covered trees and mountains. There were no cars, buildings, or other people milling around. But as I watched my family zip through the trails ahead of me, I started getting nervous. What if I had a breakdow
n, what if I got snagged by some branches? They’d never know it! I’d be lunch for some bear!

  After worrying for several miles, finally the inevitable happened. I did get hung up . . . barely.

  “I got stuck,” I yelled when they finally stopped after realizing I wasn’t following them. Normally, I wasn’t a “drama queen,” but I’d gotten a little more fearful with every mile. Finally, when they rode up to me, I threw off my goggles and helmet and yelled, “And I almost died!”

  But in spite of our mishaps and dramatics, snowmachining has always been a part of our lives and my childhood. (Piper started riding hers out to the cabin—through trails without cell reception, between trees, over frozen lakes, up hills, and even through an open creek—when she was six . . . and the ride is eleven miles!)

  We didn’t love snowmachines just because they’re fun. We also loved them because we wanted to be like Dad. Even though he maintained his jobs, he was in some ways “Mr. Mom” around the house. While Mom was tackling her new job, he kept up the domestic duties he’d begun while she was on the city council. In fact, he’s as good at braiding hair as he is at rebuilding a snowmachine in fifty-mile-per-hour winds. When Mom was away on political trips, he would always help us get ready for school. I remember very distinctly that he put my hair up in three cute little ponytails on the first day of preschool. Dad didn’t really know it looked kind of silly, but he had done it simply because that’s what I wanted. When my mom picked me up and saw those three ponytails—one on the right side of my head, one on the left, and one in the back—she just laughed. Not only was it fun to see him look through our closets, shirt by shirt, he let us wear whatever we wanted . . . including hats. I loved to wear them, but not the cute kind that some parents put on their children for nice photos. No, I wore cowgirl hats, French berets, and ball caps to school. Though I looked absolutely ridiculous, Dad didn’t care. He also let me go to preschool wearing a flower girl dress I’d worn in my aunt and uncle’s wedding. Sounds cute until you realize I wore it with black tights and my pink and white Nike Air Force 1’s.

  And speaking of that flower girl dress . . . I got a lot of wear out of that thing.

  When I was four years old, Mom came home and asked, “Hey, Bristol, do you want to be in a pageant?” She was friends with the pageant director, who’d talked her into entering me in it.

  At only four, I didn’t have enough sense to say no.

  Let’s just say we weren’t quite prepared as we journeyed to an enormous theater in Anchorage on pageant day. It was absolutely packed! Mom put me in my old flower girl dress, dropped me off with a kiss, and went to sit in the audience with Grandma and Grandpa. When I walked backstage, it was into a cloud of hair spray and makeup. Crazy pageant moms were running around with huge bags of clothespins and duct tape (for emergencies) as they smudged lipstick and eyeliner on their kids’ little round faces. I sat down and it dawned on me, more with every passing minute, that I was underprepared for this event. I counted the minutes until it was my turn to take a turn on the stage. Though Mom had participated in a pageant before, she had no idea that other moms would take a kids’ pageant so seriously. She sat happily in the audience and smiled as she saw me walk hesitantly onto the stage.

  There was just one problem. We were supposed to speak.

  Now, I’m not the shyest person in the world, but I was not ready to make my public-speaking debut right then and there.

  When Mom realized I was supposed to talk in front of everyone, her face fell. She hadn’t prepared me for that. Her eyes were big with worry as I approached the kid-height microphone.

  They didn’t expect me to deliver the Gettysburg Address. All I had to do was walk up and introduce myself—basic stuff. I was supposed to say my name, hometown, age, and where I attended preschool. But when I got to the mic, I opened my mouth, looked out into the crowd, and froze. The only thing that came out was, “I’m . . . B-B-Bristol . . .”

  Then I was quickly overcome with embarrassment and walked off the stage.

  I walked out of the theater with the smallest trophy possible, and was the only contestant who didn’t get flowers.

  The lady who’d given me the trophy smiled—with perfectly applied lipstick—and said, “Thanks for participating.”

  The plastic gold(ish) trophy was meant to smooth over my terrible performance. But even though I was four, I knew.

  I’d bombed.

  Even though I wasn’t the pageant type, my aunt Molly, who had only a son at the time, loved to doll me up. Once I went to stay with her for the weekend so I could play with my cousin Payton, who’s two years younger than I am. Aunt Molly had so much fun spoiling me. She dressed me in sweet dresses and headbands . . . she curled my hair. That one visit, though, she got carried away, threw me in the car seat, and took me to get my ears pierced! I was only two and my mom was a little surprised when Molly dropped me off at our house with pink rhinestone studs in.

  “What did you do to my daughter?” she exclaimed.

  Aunt Molly, who’s now a pediatric dental hygienist, just laughed. Several years later, she had a girl of her own. McKinley just turned ten . . . and she still doesn’t have her ears pierced!

  “Hey, McKinley, wanna go get those ears pierced? I’ll take ya!” my mom frequently says jokingly at family functions.

  Mom hasn’t convinced her yet.

  I had a different kind of fashion mishap at my other aunt’s house. My parents were out of town, so we were being watched by my aunt Heather and uncle Kurt. I was only about seven or eight years old and had really long beautiful dark hair that I was always known for. It hung all the way to my waist.

  “Will you cut my hair? I want to look like Lauden,” I said, handing Uncle Kurt a pair of scissors.

  (I was always in awe of how beautiful my cousin was—still is!—and I wanted to look just like her!)

  Uncle Kurt didn’t hesitate. He just put all of that gorgeous hair into a ponytail—and cut the whole thing off. I loved my new short cut until I realized that it was permanent!

  My childhood was full of many funny moments like those with our family.

  On Sundays we went to church, which—of course—was less than exciting for a little kid. Mom would let me put my head in her lap, and she’d tuck strands of my hair behind my ear, over and over. I’d listen to the preacher talk about Jesus and forgiveness and love, but eventually his voice would seem to grow distant and I’d succumb to sleep right there in the pew.

  Sermon sleep is the best sleep ever.

  I always looked forward to communion, because after church they let me go through all of the aisles and pick up the little plastic cups.

  As I got older, I’d also volunteer to help in the nursery. Even though there were always a bunch of adults in there, I’d be the one who wanted to fuss over the babies and rock them. I just loved babies—real ones!—like most girls love toys or dolls. I’d even take Willow’s old car seat, stick a doll in it, cover it with a blanket, and walk around at parks pretending I had a real baby inside. (I thought I tricked a few people, but they may have just been polite.) On the morning of my ninth birthday, I even crawled into bed with Mom and demanded—quite rudely—“If you don’t have a baby, you better go rent me one!”

  With every year that I grew older, my mom grew more politically prominent. When I was seven, Mom decided to run for mayor, and like everything in the Palin household, it was a family affair. She decided on the theme “Positive-ly Palin,” and I helped her select the rather unusual combination of pink and green for her signs. (No one had ever used those colors!) We put them all over town. I say “we,” but I think I spent more time in the little red wagon with Track while Mom, Dad, and her friends nailed them up. Still, it was a family endeavor, and we were thrilled when she won. And by a pretty good margin!

  Soon afterward, in 1999, she was elected by other mayors in Alaska to serve as president of the
Conference of Mayors. To outsiders who’d never heard of my mom’s name until she burst out onto the national stage during the 2008 presidential campaign, it seemed that her rise to political fame was sudden and abrupt. Undoubtedly, it was. But as her child, I saw it as a natural, gradual progression, and I never thought anything of being “Sarah Palin’s daughter.”

  In Alaska, I was known just as commonly as “Todd Palin’s daughter.” He’s a legend around here. Not only is he an amazing hair braider, he’s a commercial fisherman, had a great job on the North Slope, and was part owner of Valley Polaris. His company sold ATVs, watercraft, and snowmachines and fixed them there in the shop. Willow loved hanging out there so much that Mom said she was raised at the Polaris shop on Dad’s hip. Even when she was young, she was a “motorhead.”

  Dad has won the Iron Dog competition four times and placed second four times . . . an impressive feat since it’s the world’s longest snowmachine race through the most remote and rugged terrain in Alaska. Of the six hundred or so teams that have started the race since it first began, less than half have finished. Why? Temperatures frequently fall to fifty degrees below zero—not even factoring in the wind—which means Dad wears duct tape on his face for protection. The two-thousand-mile race takes six days, and the trail carries the racers over tree stumps, cliffs, large mounds of earth, the frozen Bering Sea, and other rivers so destructive to snowmachines that when the machines cross the finish line, they have basically been almost completely rebuilt along the way. The drivers don’t fare too much better. Broken bones are expected, and many riders just quit because their machines get fried or they tire of the relentless, unimaginable cold. But not my dad. When Mom was governor, people called him the “First Dude,” but he was known for being so tough he could withstand wipeouts at one hundred miles per hour and the mechanical breakdowns that would make normal men give up.