Maternity Pants

Bristol Palin. I imagine her having to tell her mother, who is by all accounts some kind of actual superwoman - she may have the invisible jet, I don't know - that she is going to be a teenage pregnancy statistic. Beyond the sheer terror that that girl, that 17 year old child turned adult in a moment, must've felt when the stick turned blue, I would think that telling her mother who has accomplished a world of everythings would have been ... I don't even have the word. Because as much as you know that your parents love you - this is going to be big pain- for both of you.

And then...

Your mom gets vetted -(this is my attempt at fancy pants political talk - hope it's the right word) - to be the Vice President of the United States... in an election year... with a viable chance to become the first female in an executive office ... running against the first non-white major party candidate for executive office... and the Clintons (because they always seems to be lurking around) ... and it is beyond a media circus, it's a media... I don't even have the word. If timing is everything, this kid got in the wrong line.

And then...

after the initial - announcement to her parents - you gotta know that this girl's private, most personal business, was now being discussed by all kinds of political people (who may say they care about her, but...) and they were trying to figure out if it would damage her mom's political career, (can you imagine the guilt), or if it would be seen as an asset because it would make her seem more "real" or something- how totally mortifying. (Did you want your parents' friends to know who you'd been kissing let alone this?) And then she must, at some point, realize- maybe right away - that everyone, anyone that cares to know, is going to know about this mistake, and that it is going to be discussed by everyone, people she knows and people she doesn't know, and the political mileage that anyone with a cause, or a soapbox, or an agenda (or a blog) is going to get out of this - and the immensity of the consequences must be like the most crushing snowball of realization ever. I don't even have the word.

This poor girl is facing humiliation on a scale that most of us didn't even think existed.

And so...

Bristol Palin, if you're reading this, (and I'm pretty sure you are), take heart. It is... what it is right now but this will pass and it could be really good eventually. My grandparents got married when they were 17 (Bristol Palin's age- although under admittedly different circumstances) and they were married well over 50 years when my grandfather died last summer. My grandmother called him "The Old Gent" and she kept asking for him after he was gone. They raised 10 children, my really good mother among them. They were married at 17 and it was not too young to have a long successful marriage and family and life. I hope that for Bristol Palin. I hope that she really loves the boy that will soon be her husband the father of her baby - and I hope he really loves her. I hope they keep really loving each other - even if they look around and wonder "what if...", because "what if" may not have been better - easier maybe, but not always better - and even people that get married a lot older than 17 can understand that.