Before We Were Yours Audiobook Excerpt Transcript

Aiken South Carolina present day, I take a breath scoot to the edge of the seat, and straighten my jacket, as the limo rolls to a stop on the boiling hot asphalt news. Vans. Wait along the curb accentuating the importance of this morning’s seemingly innocuous meeting. But not one moment of this day will happen by accident. These past two months in South Carolina have been all about making sure the nuances are just right, shaping the inferences so as to hint, but no more definitive statements are not to be made not yet.

Anyway, not for a long time, if I have my way about it, I wish I could forget why I’ve come home, but even the fact that my father isn’t reading his notes or checking the briefing from Leslie is an uber-efficient press secretary is an undeniable reminder. There’S no escaping the enemy that rides silently in the car with us. It’S here in the back seat, hiding beneath the gray tailored suit that hangs a hint too loose over my father’s broad shoulders, daddy stares out the window, his head, leaning to one side. He has relegated his aides and Leslie to another car. Are you feeling all right?

I reach across to brush a long blonde hair mine off the seat, so it won’t cling to his trousers when he gets out. If my mother were here, she’d whip out a mini lint brush but she’s home preparing for our second event of the day, a family Christmas photo that must be taken months early just in case daddy’s prognosis worsens, he sits a bit straighter lifts. His head static makes his thick gray hair stick straight out. I want to smooth it down for him, but I don’t it would be a breach of protocol if my mother is intimately involved in the micro aspects of our lives, such as fretting over lint and planning for the family Christmas photo in July. My father is the opposite: he is distant, an island of staunch maleness in a household of women.

I know he cares deeply about my mother, my two sisters, and me, but he seldom voices the sentiment out loud. I also know that I’m his favorite, but the one who confuses him most. He is a product of an era when women went to college to secure the requisite. Mrs degree he’s not quite sure what to do with a 30-year-old daughter who graduated top of her class from Columbia law and actually enjoys the gritty world of our attorney’s office. Whatever the reason, perhaps just because the positions of perfectionist daughter and sweet daughter were already taken in our family, I have always been a brainiac daughter, I loved school, and it was the unspoken conclusion that I would be the family torchbearer.

The sun replacement is the one to succeed. My father, somehow I always imagined that I’d be older when it happened and that I would be ready now. I look at my dad and think: how can you not want it avery? This is what he’s worked for all his life. What generations of Staffords have labored for since the revolutionary war?

For heaven’s sake, our family has always held fast to the guiding rope of public service. Daddy is no exception since graduating from west point and serving as an army aviator before I was born, he has upheld the family name with dignity and determination. Of course, you want this. I tell myself. You’Ve always wanted this.

You just didn’t expect it to happen yet, and not this way. That’S all secretly, I’m clinging by all ten fingernails to the best-case scenario. The enemies will be vanquished on both fronts: political and medical. My father will be cured by the combination of the surgery that brought him home from the summer congressional session early and the chemo pump. He must wear a strapped to his leg.

Every three weeks my move home to Aiken will be temporary. Cancer will no longer be a part of our lives, it can be beaten, other people have done it and if anyone can senator wells Stafford can there is not anywhere a stronger man or better man than my dad ready. He asks straightening his suit. It’S a relief when he swipes down the rooster tail in his hair. I’m not prepared to cross the line from daughter to caretaker right behind you.

I do anything for him, but I hope it’s many more years before we’re forced to reverse the roles of parent and child. I’ve learned how hard that is while watching my father struggle to make decisions for his mother. My once quick-witted fun-loving grandma Judy is now a ghost of her former self, as painful as that is daddy. Can’T talk to anyone about it