American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

355/439
GETTING BETTER
The doctors performed all sorts of tests on my little girl. Some of them
really pissed me off.
I remember especially when they took blood, which they had to do
a lot. They’d hold her upside down and prick her foot; a lot of times it
wouldn’t bleed and they’d have to do it again and again. She’d be crying
the whole time.
These were long days, but eventually the docs figured out that my
daughter didn’t have leukemia. While there was jaundice and some
other complications, they were able to get control of the infections that
had made her sick. She got better.
One of the things that was incredibly frustrating was her reaction
to me. She seemed to cry every time I held her. She wanted Mommy.
Taya said that she reacted that way to all men—whenever she heard a
male voice, she would cry.
Whatever the reason, it hurt me badly. Here I had come all this
way and truly loved her, and she rejected me.
Things were better with my son, who remembered me and now
was older and more ready to play. But once again, the normal troubles
that parents have with their kids and with each other were compounded
by the separation and stress we’d all just gone through.
Little things could really be annoying. I expected my son to look
me in the eye when I was scolding him. Taya was bothered by this, because
she felt he wasn’t accustomed to me or my tone and it was too
much to ask a two-year-old to look me in the eye in that situation. But
my feeling was just the opposite. It was the right thing for him to do.
He wasn’t being corrected by a stranger. He was being disciplined by