Spoken From The Heart Part 8

On December 18, I returned to Was.h.i.+ngton. I had a new t.i.tle, First LadyDesignate, and I was going to be shown the White House by Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton. I knew the White House from Bar and Gampy's four years; I had slept under the high carved headboard and heavy covers in the Lincoln Bedroom. In the last six years, the Clintons had also hosted us for official governors a.s.sociation dinners. But that morning, as I waited at the ornate, gilded Mayflower Hotel for word that Hillary Clinton was ready for us to depart for the White House, there was a profound difference. My visit this time was rather like the walk-through of a house on the morning before settlement, except that a president and his wife do not own the White House. It is the American people's house. I would inhabit it, like Dolley Madison and Mary Todd Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt and Bess Truman, like Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and the other women before me. I would care for it, and perhaps leave a little something of myself behind.

Hillary Clinton was waiting for us on the South Portico. With plans to move out and to a.s.sume her role in the Senate, she had been running late that morning, but in the press reports, I was the one who was chided for tardiness and for my clothes. That's the struggle with trying to find news when you have twenty cameras trained on two women greeting each other at a doorway for a private tea. What seems most interesting is often mostly wrong. I do remember that when my big, black car pulled up and the Secret Service agents appeared, they couldn't open the car doors. The agents tugged on the handles while we stayed stuck inside, smiling gamely, and Hillary stood, waiting awkwardly. Finally, someone figured out how to release the locks.

Once I stepped out, Hillary was gracious and forthcoming. There is a particular kins.h.i.+p that develops between the spouses of political leaders. I had it with many of the governors' wives, and I would continue to have it with former first ladies and the wives of many foreign leaders. There was a similarity and at times a strangeness to our shared circ.u.mstances that created an instant bond. It is a kins.h.i.+p I felt regardless of political persuasion, and I felt it that morning at the double-door entrance to the South Portico with Hillary, as she began our tour of the public house and the private living quarters and offered me her very candid advice. She even told me that, if she had it to do all over again, she would not have had an office in the West Wing, that she seldom used it after the healthcare debate ended. And I do know many women who wonder to this day why it is still referred to as Hillary's healthcare plan, rather than the Clinton healthcare plan, when it was done under the auspices of her husband, the president.

Hillary gave me another piece of heartfelt advice. She told me not to turn down invitations to unique or special events. In the late winter of 1995, Jackie Kennedy had called Hillary to invite her and her daughter, Chelsea, to the ballet in New York. Chelsea was in school; Hillary had a full schedule, and, feeling pressed, she declined. In May, Jackie died of cancer. Hillary said that she had long regretted her choice to stay home and wanted me to know that story so that I would not do the same.

Joined by Chelsea, Hillary led me through the lower level, sharing with me her fond recollections of the parties they had hosted in the Palm Room, the gla.s.sed-in conservatory that divides the formal White House from the West Wing. It was a brief tour through their public and private lives, a whirlwind of parties arranged in the Blue Room, the Red Room, and the Green Room, until I could almost glimpse the elegantly set tables and the banquet chairs. But when we went up to the State Floor, both Hillary and I had forgotten about the public tours. She opened the door to lead me through the formal state rooms, and we caught sight of a large tour group. She quickly shut the door, but not

before some very surprised tourists got a good look at the outgoing and incoming first ladies.

We moved upstairs to the family quarters, where at one point Chelsea said, "Mom, tell Mrs. Bush about the tomato plants," and Hillary led me out on the parapet off the third floor, where each spring they set out pots of tomato plants, because "you just can't get good tomatoes." I nodded my head and smiled and thought, Tomatoes? You can't get good tomatoes at the White House? But George and I also grew pots of tomatoes on the parapet.

Hillary was thinking about her own future and how much she wanted to buy a house of her own in Was.h.i.+ngton, saying that "men keep saying to me, 'You're going to be a senator, just rent something, and you can find something later.' But," she told me, "that doesn't work on my time line. I need to be moved into a new house. I need to have a house." And I understood her completely. If I had been Hillary, I would not have wanted to wait until after I was in the Senate to find my home.

We were standing in the first lady's dressing room when Hillary paused and remembered something that Barbara Bush had shown her, eight years before. "Your mother-in-law stood right here and told me that from this window you can see straight down into the Rose Garden and also over to the Oval Office, and you can watch what's going on."

I did look out that window many times over the years, out to the Rose Garden and around the grounds, always careful to stand just inside the frame so that no one would spot me. If George was doing an event in the Rose Garden, I could see it from the window and live on television at the same time.

I finished that day by interviewing potential staff members for my new East Wing office at the White House. The last candidate had four legs and was ten weeks old. He was a Scottish terrier puppy, born to a dog owned by New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, and, of course, I fell in love. I had seen his puppy pictures on November 4, my birthday, when George and I were in New Jersey on the last leg of the campaign trail.

George hadn't gotten me a gift, and Christie Whitman suggested a puppy. Our D.C.

interview sealed the deal. Barney flew back with me to Austin the next day to join our animal family. We already had a springer spaniel, Spot, one of the six puppies born to Bar's dog, Millie, in 1989, when she lived in the White House. Spot was the runt of the litter, and I can still recall Barbara and Jenna proudly taking their new puppy and their grandmother, simultaneously, to first-grade show 'n' tell in Dallas. Afterward, the princ.i.p.al of Preston Hollow Elementary, Susie Oliphant, had the children line the halls so that Jenna, Barbara, Bar, and Spot could walk past the whole school.

All our animals in Dallas were named for Texas Rangers baseball players. Spot got her name in honor of the infielder Scott Fletcher, Barbara's favorite player. Of course, the Rangers almost immediately traded Scott. Our cat was named after Ruben Sierra, whose nickname, El Indio, gave Kitty her name, La India. And at times, I would look at our pets and remember our girls and our lives, the family that we were beyond the White House walls.

For the move to the White House, I packed our clothes, family photos, and a single piece of furniture, a chest of drawers that had belonged to George's grandmother, which I thought would fit perfectly in my dressing room. We didn't send another thing. I knew from Bar that the White House has a huge and exquisite collection of furniture and art, and that we would leave office with an entirely new book collection, t.i.tles given to us by authors, publishers, and friends. For the trip to Was.h.i.+ngton, our possessions took up less than one very small moving van. The rest I planned to send to our ranch, and the incoming governor, Rick Perry, and his wife, Anita, very kindly waited to move into the Governor's Mansion until our home was ready, so that the movers could transport our furniture directly to Crawford.

I do regret now that in those hectic days I never sat down with Anita, the new first lady of Texas, to give her much of the same helpful advice that Rita Clements had given me. I never had a chance to walk her through everything, from the house to the responsibilities; there just wasn't time. Our good friend Jeanne Johnson Phillips was overseeing the inaugural festivities, and I was being asked to decide on programs, a prayer service, an authors' event, and of course, clothes. I had not looked at or contemplated an inaugural wardrobe for me or for the girls before the election was decided. Now I had barely one month to be dressed, not simply for the inauguration and the night of b.a.l.l.s but for the three days of events surrounding them. And clothes are a big part of being first lady, dating back all the way to Martha Was.h.i.+ngton and Dolley Madison. The Dallas designer Michael Faircloth made me a deep turquoise outfit for the inaugural and a red lace gown with Austrian crystals for the inaugural night. But I had to have more gowns and outfits for other inaugural events, and I bought two other long dresses, one champagne, one deep teal, as well as two suits and a cranberry-colored dress.

Jenna and Barbara bought inaugural ceremony outfits designed by Lela Rose, the daughter of our good Dallas friends Rusty and Deedie Rose; she also made their gowns for the Texas Black Tie & Boots Ball the night before. For their official inaugural night ball gowns, they chose designs by Susan Dell of Austin, a strapless beaded black gown for Jenna and a V-neck silk and chiffon beaded currant gown for Barbara.

We arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and stayed, as all presidents-elect do, in the historic Blair House across the street from the White House, the same home where we had stayed with Gampy in 1988. When I went to the Lincoln Memorial for a concert to open the inaugural festivities, my place on the platform was next to the spot marked "President-elect."

Inauguration Eve began early in the morning with a series of interviews at Blair House, including a sit-down with Katie Couric, then of NBC's Today Today show. Toward the show. Toward the end of our conversation, she said to me, "You appear to be a very traditional woman. Is that a fair characterization?" It was slightly better than the other perennial interview question, "Are you going to be Hillary Clinton or Barbara Bush?" as if the first lady's role was like hand-me-down shoes and I had to choose between two previously worn pairs.

But there was, from the start, an underlying a.s.sumption on the part of the press that I would be someone else when I a.s.sumed the role of first lady, that I would not, under any circ.u.mstances, simply be myself.

As I had done when George was sworn in as governor of Texas, I planned an event to celebrate authors. This was to be my "first lady" inaugural party. I was much more interested in listening to Stephen Ambrose discuss history or Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark talk about plotting a mystery or having Stanley Crouch and the Texas author Steve Harrigan discuss literature than I was in attending another large luncheon or party; and to me, an afternoon with authors was as glamorous as a highheeled, long-gown ball. The Cheneys sat in the front row, along with Bar and Gampy and my mother and George, who introduced me by saying, "Her love for books is real, her love for children is real, and my love for her is real." Then I walked onto a stage decorated to look like a library, and before a crowd of more than three thousand, I spoke of my pa.s.sion for literature, saying, "Our country's authors have helped forge the American ident.i.ty, create its memory, and define and reinforce our national consciousness," adding, "Books have done what humans rarely do, convince us to put down the remote control."

Inauguration Day dawned cold and rainy, but to George and me, the morning was beautiful. We began with a church service at the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church. The creamy yellow building held its first service in 1816; its nearly one-thousand-pound steeple bell was cast by Paul Revere's son. Every president since James Madison has wors.h.i.+ped there; pew fifty-four is designated as the President's Pew. St. John's became our Was.h.i.+ngton church while we were at the White House; it was where we had attended services in 1988, when George had been working on his father's presidential campaign.

Listening to the sermon and the prayers provided our last moments for tranquil reflection. From St. John's, we would be whisked from event to event; each second of our day would be accounted for, and the clock was unyielding.

After the service, we drove straight across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, where Bill and Hillary Clinton were waiting to greet us for the traditional coffee.

The Cheneys came, as did Al and Tipper Gore. Then we departed in our motorcade for the Capitol, George and Bill Clinton riding in the president's car, and Hillary and me following behind. As we chatted on the short drive, I thought of how, in most cases, a first lady's departure day is the start of her retirement. For Hillary, it was the beginning of her own career. And nearly two years after George had held his press conference in the garden of the Texas Governor's Mansion, he was going to be sworn in as the forty-third president of the United States, and only the second presidential son to hold the office himself. History would now record John Adams and John Quincy Adams and George H.

W. Bush and George W. Bush.

As we rode up Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw a collection of protesters, waving placards and calling George's election illegitimate. Until that moment, I had thought that once a winner was formally declared, the postelection rancor would die down, that everyone would move on. But in the years to come, we found that, for some, the bitterness remained.

There is no grand entrance to be made for the outgoing president and his incoming successor. We entered through a side door at the Capitol into a rather ordinary hallway, distinguished only by two moderately sized gilded eagles perched at the top of each wall. From there, it was off to an interior room to wait. Outside, invited guests and spectators had been gathering for hours, even with the rain. Now, with the noon hour approaching, it was George's time. We began our walk, the same basic route that I had taken for Gampy's inaugurals and through the s.p.a.ces where we had strolled with friends on all those weekend tours. We crossed the st.u.r.dy crypt, built to support the soaring dome of the Capitol Rotunda. Lynne Cheney was my companion; George, as the incoming president, would be the last to take his place on the podium. From the crypt, we climbed the stairs to the magnificent Rotunda, ringed by statues and enormous paintings of Revolutionary War scenes, the landing of the Pilgrims, the discovery of the Mississippi, and the baptism of Pocahontas. We pa.s.sed them all as if in a blur; there was barely time to glance up at the fresco in the dome, painted to glorify George Was.h.i.+ngton.

George had wanted to use Was.h.i.+ngton's Bible, the same Bible that his father had used in 1989, for the bicentennial of George Was.h.i.+ngton's inauguration as the nation's first president. The Was.h.i.+ngton Bible had been specially transported under Masonic guard from New York to Was.h.i.+ngton. But we also had a Bush family Bible on hand, the same one that George had used when he was sworn in as governor of Texas, in case the weather turned bad. In the end, we would use both, the Bush Bible laid on top of Was.h.i.+ngton's, both closed to protect them from the damp, and the continuity of our national past resting beneath George's hands.

As we left the Rotunda, we walked down a steep set of stairs in a very ordinary hallway, no decorations, just wide-cut, gray stone blocks bathed in darkness, except for the blinding array of television lights waiting to illuminate us as we descended. But from the small doorway, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., was spread before us, the vast expanse of the Mall, the tall, spare point of the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument, the wide colonnade of the Lincoln Memorial, and the blocks of hard granite buildings lining the avenues. Their edges were soft, as if in a dream, because a cool mist had settled over the city. And even though I had seen the exact same view three other times, on this day, that sight, for those few seconds, was uniquely ours.

I tried to savor it all--the oath of office, the inaugural address, the military band, the friends and family who had come to share the day. For me, the inauguration is the thing of beauty, the scene that will last when all others have faded away.

After the ceremony, back inside, George paused at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the Rotunda and tried to hug me and the girls and his parents, but there was a clock to be kept, and the Senate staffers who oversee the inaugural events were urging us on. We walked the Clintons out to the limousine that would carry them to Andrews Air Force Base, where they would depart for their new home in Chappaqua, not far from New York City. Then we returned for the inaugural luncheon in Statuary Hall, the semicircular room with the wide, marble Corinthian columns quarried from along the Potomac River. It was here that the U.S. House of Representatives had met for nearly forty years, where John Quincy Adams supposedly used the room's echoey acoustics to eavesdrop on his fellow congressmen, and where he also eventually collapsed at his desk.

In this room too, John Quincy Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson were inaugurated as president, and the Marquis de Lafayette became the first foreign dignitary to address the U.S. Congress. This afternoon, I sat next to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky, who had overseen the inaugural events, and we talked about the intricacies of planning the ceremony. I looked out upon the other tables, catching site of Jenna and Barbara at their first inaugural lunch and at all our own good friends scattered about the room.

Surrounding us were the statues of prominent Americans from many states. We gazed out upon marble carvings of Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boy from Vermont; Robert Fulton, who invented the steams.h.i.+p; and also Sam Houston, whose statue had been carved by the Austin artist Elisabet Ney. She had called him one of "my wild boys."

George and I left the lunch so that he could review the troops, and then we began the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue to commence the inaugural parade.

Barbara and Jenna were halfway through their freshman year of college. I had told them to be careful of what they wore on their feet. Inaugural festivities require a lot of climbing stone staircases, standing on marble floors, standing in general, and then sitting in a chilly reviewing stand to watch all the wonderfully enthusiastic floats, performers, and bands from every state in the nation pa.s.s. They, of course, chose stiletto-heeled boots, and by the time they got to the Capitol, they were ready to take them off.

After the parade, where both the Midland and Lee high school bands performed, as well as the marching bands from my alma maters, the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University, there was a brief period to rest and eat a small dinner before we began dressing for the round of inaugural b.a.l.l.s. The unbelievably efficient White House ushers and staff had removed the Clintons' possessions--Bill Clinton had told us that morning that, by the end, he was packing simply by pulling out drawers and dumping their contents into boxes. Then the staff unpacked all our clothes and arranged our rooms; even our photographs were out on display. The transfer of families is a ch.o.r.eographic masterpiece, done with exceptional speed.

By now, my feet hurt, but I squeezed them into my shoes. It was painful almost from the first step. One of my friends from Midland later wrote that she saw women wearing tennis shoes under their long evening dresses, and that our good friend Dr.

Charlie Younger had lent blue surgery covers to protect everyone's shoes and feet from the cold and wet. Some of our close friends couldn't get rides back to their hotels after the b.a.l.l.s; they rode D.C.'s subway system, the Metro, in their tuxes, ball gowns, and high heels.

We had eight b.a.l.l.s; the Clintons had held fourteen just four years before. "Ball" is almost a misnomer for some of these events, which are held in convention centers and hotel ballrooms with cash bars and are more like cattle calls, where there is barely s.p.a.ce to turn around and no place to sit down. People wait all evening for the president and first lady and also the vice president and his wife to walk in on a great stage. Each moment is like a scene from a play, with eight nearly identical performances in a single night. The inaugural organizers recite the same introduction; the president speaks; and the new first couple dances the same dance to the same music, waves, and departs for another ball in another part of town. The fun was actually getting to visit with whoever was riding with us to the next ball. We had Condi Rice and her date in our limo a couple of times; and also George's campaign chair, Don Evans, and his wife, Susie, old Midland friends; and Mercer and Gabby Reynolds, who had helped plan the inauguration. We told jokes and laughed as the motorcade rolled through the city that was now our home.

For the next inaugural in 2005, I chose my shoes with what I thought was more care, but they were dyed to match my dress, and they must have shrunk during the dyeing process. That night, I distinctly remember walking from ball to ball through the underground corridors of the Was.h.i.+ngton Convention Center in my bare, aching feet, carrying my shoes in my hand.

But I loved watching George dance with Jenna and Barbara at the TexasWyoming Ball, and I loved that the people who had worked so long and hard for us had a chance to celebrate as well. Our theme was "Celebrating America's Spirit Together." It was not, however, a late night for the new president. We were home before midnight, quite a change from the previous administration, which relished late nights. Bill and Hillary had not wanted to miss more than a few minutes of their last day in the White House, even watching a movie in the movie theater at 2:30 a.m. The fun of that night left them so tired that when Barbara, Jenna, and I glanced over at Bill during George's inaugural address, he was dozing.

As we pulled back inside the White House grounds a few minutes before midnight, George, who was already famous for his early bedtimes, joked to our Secret Service detail, "This is going to be new for you." And the agent in the front laughed and said, "Yeah, I'm going to say to my wife, 'Guess what, honey? I'm home!'"

That night, as we lay in bed, the entire White House upstairs residence was packed. George's parents were down the hall in the Queens' Bedroom, named for all the royal guests who had stayed in it. My mother was sleeping in another guest room, Jenna and Barbara were in their rooms, and every other s.p.a.ce was filled with George's siblings and their families, a total of twenty-three relatives, some spending the night on rollaway cots. But having everyone with us was like the sigh of relief I would breathe back in Texas when I heard the door open late at night and I knew the girls were home and headed for bed. That inaugural night, I drifted off to sleep knowing that everyone we loved was safe, tucked in together under this one, remarkable roof.

The next morning, Sunday, we attended the traditional inaugural prayer service, decreed by Congress and held since the first swearing in of George Was.h.i.+ngton. It was now at the National Cathedral and was a beautiful interfaith collection of music, prayers, and verse. The Navy Sea Chanters and Larry Gatlin both sang in the musical prelude, and the service ended with a chorus of "America the Beautiful." We returned to the White House for a brunch with all of our friends. I was expecting to sit around and listen to their funny stories of the inauguration, like the blue surgical booties and the tennis sneakers, to hear about what they did, what parties they went to, who they saw. Instead, we were mobbed by our own friends, who wanted to snap pictures of us with their families and children. It was like being at an official event all over again. Our friends flew home, and George and I went to work, he to the Oval Office and I to my s.p.a.ce in the East Wing. It was years before I got to hear all their stories.

I was grateful for the days we had already spent in the White House with Ganny and Gampy. Parts of it are warrens of rooms and alcoves and doorways; there are 132 rooms housed inside its walls. At first, my a.s.sistant, Sarah Moss, who worked in an upstairs office in the residence, would get lost just trying to find the elevator foyer. I might not be entirely certain of what I was going to do as first lady, but at least right away, I could find the elevator.

As for George, he was shocked when two members of the residence staff, Sam Sutton and Fidel Medina, introduced themselves to him as the president's valets. George took his dad aside and said, "I don't think I need a valet." Gampy smiled and told him, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it."

My first project found me on my first workday morning at the White House. I was coming down the elevator into the ground-floor Cross Hall as George's close political advisor Karl Rove was walking toward the West Wing with d.i.c.k Moe, head of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The National Trust designates and protects many of our nation's most treasured landmarks. I introduced myself and said that I was interested in historical preservation and wanted to continue Hillary Clinton's work on Save America's Treasures, a federal program that had begun in 1998 to protect our country's leading historical landmarks and artifacts. Its first project had been the restoration of the 1812 Star-Spangled Banner. d.i.c.k was familiar with the work George had done in Texas to save and preserve the state's historic county courthouses.

I became the honorary chair of Save America's Treasures, and two years later launched a complementary initiative, Preserve America, which encourages every community to protect its unique historic a.s.sets. My co-chair at Preserve America was John Nau, a friend from Texas who is deeply interested in preservation and who had worked to protect battlefields and other important sites from the Civil War. Over George's two terms, more than six hundred communities in all fifty states and the U.S.

Virgin Islands were officially designated as Preserve America Communities.

But my first priority was the White House itself. I knew what a remarkable collection of art and furniture the White House had, exceptional pieces by many of America's best furniture makers, pieces that had been owned by other presidents, even a collection of campaign bandannas from Andrew Jackson's run for the presidency. I was eager to start making the White House residence our home. Ken Blasingame, an artist and decorator, and my longtime friend, came to help me make the private rooms into a home for our family. Along with James Powell, an antiques expert from Austin, Ken searched the special, climate-controlled facility that stores the White House collection to look for furniture from past administrations that would be appropriate for each room.

Each new arrival to the White House finds the residence furnished in the style of his predecessor. Many rooms remain unchanged from administration to administration.

The Clintons and the Bushes had kept the black lacquer Chinese screen that Nancy Reagan's much-loved decorator, Ted Graber, had installed in the long, cavernous upstairs Cross Hall. I kept the cheerful, light fabric that the Clintons had used to cover the walls of the small family dining room upstairs.

I set up the girls' rooms first, painting the walls a soft aqua and installing two double beds in each, so that they could have friends sleep over, as they had done in Austin. Many nights during college breaks and summer vacations we had eight girls crowded into the two rooms. In Barbara's room, I hung a loaned portrait of identical twins. My next project was the Treaty Room.

The Treaty Room is quite literally that, a room where the peace protocol to end the Spanish-American War was signed in 1898 and where President John F. Kennedy had signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty some seven weeks before he died. President Grant had used it as his cabinet room, and the room had the original Grant administration cabinet desk, with eight drawers, one for each cabinet member, plus the president. After the West Wing was built, the Treaty Room was intermittently used as a private presidential study. George's father had used it as his upstairs office, and I knew George would like to do the same. Most nights, after we ate dinner, he would head to the Treaty Room to read his nightly briefing papers and make phone calls. I painted the walls cream and brought over Grant's original sofa and two chairs from the White House collection. I wasn't as excited by a room full of Victorian furniture once I saw it arranged, but George said, "I love having Grant's furniture." He did indeed. There is something special about knowing that a previous president has used that same furniture in that very same room.

George would gaze up at the famous George P. Healy painting The Peacemakers, The Peacemakers, depicting Lincoln meeting with his generals Grant and Sherman, and Admiral Porter, at the end of the Civil War, and he would sense the history that had already happened here.

There is a unique continuity to knowing your predecessors have walked these halls, have written on these tables, have sat in these chairs. And a particular comfort as well. We both felt that comfort in the rooms of the White House.

For our first week in the White House, I also had my friend Lynn Munn in residence. Lynn had helped me move into so many homes, but this time she had stayed in Was.h.i.+ngton because her husband, Bill, had suffered a heart attack early Sunday morning after the inauguration. She and her daughter, Kelly, and son-in-law, Tom, spent their days at George Was.h.i.+ngton University Hospital with Bill, but at night they came to stay with us until Bill was well enough to fly back home to Midland.

In mid-February, I was back in Texas. Our ranch house in Crawford was close to completion, and I had another move to oversee. I had to unpack our books, hang our pictures, and stock the cabinets in the kitchen. And I needed to look at the house with a different eye, for how we would entertain foreign leaders in our newly completed home.

We'd already had our first request: Tony and Cherie Blair were coming to visit at the end of February, and Cherie was hoping to be invited to our ranch in Crawford because she had already been to the White House and Camp David with the Clintons. But our guesthouse next to the main ranch house remained unfinished, so we invited them to be our first international guests at Camp David instead.

Nestled in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, Camp David has been a presidential retreat since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, who called it Shangri-La; President Dwight Eisenhower renamed it for his grandson, David. Camp David is a nickname for Naval Support Facility Thurmont, and it is an active naval base. Marines and Navy sailors work and often live on the grounds. The camp itself spans 180 acres, and the presidential section consists of a series of comfortable cabins tucked among the trees and connected by winding paths. Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill at Camp David, Ronald Reagan had invited Margaret Thatcher, and Gampy had hosted John Major.

Camp David is a far more intimate setting than the White House. It is a place where you can get to know another leader without the crush of a roomful of a hundred or so invited guests and an hour or more of receiving lines, with their jumble of announced names, quick pleasantries, and official photos, which are all but required for formal White House entertaining. It is a real treat to show off the White House in its full splendor to visiting heads of state or government, to introduce them to celebrities and other famous Americans. But entertaining at a place like Camp David, or later our ranch, was far more relaxed and casual. A visit to Camp David is more like a visit to someone's weekend place. And it cements a different friends.h.i.+p than simply having a fancy event amid gleaming silver and glittering chandeliers. We could visit with our guests over coffee at breakfast, or have dinner and then watch a movie; for the Blairs, it was Meet the Meet the Parents. Leaders who came to visit us at the White House stayed across the street at Blair House and invariably showed up at night on the front steps in black tie.

I was a bit nervous about meeting the Blairs. I knew what close friends they had been with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and I wondered how we would get along. The British tabloids didn't help. clash of cherie and dubya's cowgirl headlined The Daily Record, The Daily Record, frosty forecast as our modern mum meets bush's little woman at summit. The Brits were convinced that it would be torture for Cherie Blair to sit down and have a meal alone with me while George and Tony got to know each other. "Laura is a cookie-baking homemaker," they wrote, "dull, mumsy, and old-fas.h.i.+oned." At least with the British press, one never needs to say "Tell us what you really think."

But Cherie Blair and I did hit it off when we had our private lunch in Aspen Lodge, the president's cabin, while George and Tony Blair and their staffs had a working afternoon at Laurel, the main lodge. Cherie is funny and smart, and we talked about our families; her oldest children and Jenna and Barbara are close in age. We enjoyed talking about topics like women's issues and improving women's health, although what I liked most about our friends.h.i.+p was the intimacy of it, rather like two busy mothers catching up over coffee. Cherie is a wonderful reader, and we shared a love of books, and more than a few favorite authors. She was particularly attuned to the challenges of being an American first lady. In England, the prime minister's wife has no official t.i.tle and few official responsibilities. Cherie was proud of having kept her day job as a barrister in the British courts.

Early on, George apologized to the Blairs that we couldn't have them to the ranch-because the final work wouldn't be complete until March. The only thing I felt bad about on this visit was that I don't think the Blairs, Cherie especially, were all that keen on pets.

We, of course, had ferried Kitty, Barney, and Spot to Camp David. I asked Cherie if they had any animals, and she paused and answered, "Well, we had a gerbil. Once."

The day that the Blairs arrived, I had spent part of the morning with Oprah Winfrey. There was tremendous curiosity about me as the new first lady, and although I hadn't really done anything yet, reporters from across the country wanted me to sit for interviews. The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Good Morning America, The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Good Morning America, the Texas papers, the Texas papers, Harper's Harper's Bazaar, People, Reuters, the list was long and growing. I was waiting upstairs for Oprah, Reuters, the list was long and growing. I was waiting upstairs for Oprah, who arrived with her best friend and business partner, Gayle King, but before they were escorted to the upper level, George pa.s.sed by with Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor, and Colin Powell, his secretary of state. My staff later told me that Oprah was speechless at meeting them. For the first time, the two individuals tasked with overseeing U.S. foreign policy were African-American. Gayle King had to give Oprah a little poke to remind her to talk. And I thought later, what a wonderful moment, to have this crossroads of success in the people's house that was, at the founding of the nation, built by the labor of unknown and unrecognized slaves.

While we hit the ground running, there were a few mishaps. Sat.u.r.day afternoon after the Blairs departed we helicoptered back to the White House to prepare for the National Governors a.s.sociation meeting, which George and I had attended for six years while Bill Clinton was in office. Now it was our turn to play host. Sunday night was the opening dinner. During their years, the Clintons had invited many of their gubernatorial friends to spend the night at the White House. We were planning on doing the same for some of our Republican governor friends, including George Pataki of New York and John Engler of Michigan. George and I waited for our overnight guests to arrive. Time pa.s.sed, and no one appeared. Finally, George turned to me and said, "Well, what did they say when you invited them?"

"When I invited them? I thought you did it," I replied. Neither of us had told our invited them? I thought you did it," I replied. Neither of us had told our staffs to invite anyone; each a.s.sumed that the other had taken care of it. At eight o'clock, Jeb and Columba Bush did show up. Jeb was the governor of Florida, and he had called us to see if he could spend the night while he was in town.

In March, I began my education initiatives in earnest. I started out wanting to replicate some of my most successful Texas projects on a national scale. I made school visits to highlight innovative educational programs and started planning an early childhood cognitive development conference to be held in Was.h.i.+ngton that summer. My other chief focus was teacher recruitment, positive ways to entice more people to work in our nation's schools and cla.s.srooms. I began by working with two programs, Teach for America and Troops to Teachers, which encourages members of the military who are retiring from the service to go into teaching. In less than ten years, it had sent almost four thousand troops into teaching. George wanted to boost the program's funding from $3 million to $30 million to help more men and women in uniform find a second career in the cla.s.sroom. At a Troops to Teachers event at the San Diego Naval Station, I spoke before almost a thousand sailors and Marines and toured the USS s.h.i.+loh, s.h.i.+loh, a ballistic a ballistic missile defense cruiser, as well as the USS Decatur, Decatur, a destroyer, while the air rushed off a destroyer, while the air rushed off the water and the waves broke around their hulls.

And there was another idea that I wanted to initiate, a National Book Festival, to be held in partners.h.i.+p with the Library of Congress, to bring some of the nation's leading authors to Was.h.i.+ngton and, with the help of cable television's C-SPAN, carry their words to the country at large. I had seen the overwhelming success of the Texas Book Festival, and I believed that it could have even more meaning on a national scale. The Library of Congress would be the perfect co-sponsor and a perfect venue to celebrate authors and promote reading and literacy.

By now, my official duties were in full swing. My chief of staff, the scheduler, and I held near daily meetings to review the hundreds of requests that came to the White House. But we were proactive; my policy director, Anne Heiligenstein, looked for opportunities where I could highlight education issues. My calendar was crowded with official and courtesy duties, like attending the opening of the Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., Cherry Blossom Festival on April 9 with the j.a.panese amba.s.sador. And when George met with a male head of state in the Oval Office, I frequently hosted his wife for coffee. Suzanne Mubarak, the first lady of Egypt, who was a longtime friend of Bar Bush's, was one of my first guests; Bar had shown Suzanne the photos of the girls when they were newborns.

Queen Rania of Jordan came to the White House, as did King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain. I needed to master the finer points of protocol that dictated whether I should address a sovereign as Your Highness or Your Majesty. Queen Elizabeth of England and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia are both "Your Majesty," but the legion of crown princes and princesses around the world are called "Your Highness," or sometimes "Your Royal Highness." It's rather amusing that, more than 225 years after the United States declared its independence from the monarchy of Great Britain, American presidents and their spouses pore over protocol briefing books to ensure that they do not make a misstep in addressing foreign royalty.

Indeed, a coffee at the White House is a highly elaborate affair, involving briefing books and protocol notes, as well as carefully selected china, coffee blends, and refreshments. It included not simply me and my guest but amba.s.sadors' wives and staff members murmuring in the background. Some of the wives who came were so nervous either about meeting me or about being in the White House that they read their carefully scripted conversation points off preprinted note cards folded in their hands or perched on their laps. But often these events turned into highly personal visits, in which the wives of other heads of state and I could talk about our lives, our families, and the challenges of balancing public needs with maintaining a private life at home. We were diverse women

thrown together by circ.u.mstance, but we found much common ground in the way of shared experiences.

For Easter, we went to the ranch. It was the first time we had spent the night in our new home, and George was thrilled to stand in the finished rooms that we had imagined and planned together for so long. As with any new house, there were windows without coverings and beds without comforters and sheets, but at last our own home was complete. We were up for sunrise services at the Canaan Baptist Church down the road, and the world that morning had the tranquil sense of being at peace. Mother came back with us to Was.h.i.+ngton, and three nights later, we went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum on the eve of the Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust. Joining us were Don Etra, one of George's best friends from Yale, and his wife, Paula, and Tom and Andi Bernstein, who had been among our co-owners of the Texas Rangers. George had appointed Don and Tom to serve on the Holocaust museum board.

The museum is only minutes from the White House, tucked in between the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Yet behind its brick and granite walls is a testament to overwhelming evil, evil planned and perpetrated by some of the most advanced minds in human history. We walked past a cattle car that had carried Jews and others along rail lines to the death camps; we saw piles of unlaced shoes from Majdanek, reconstructed barracks from Auschwitz, the implements of the crematoriums, the crayon drawings of children who were ga.s.sed and burned to ash at Theresienstadt.

The next morning, George, Mother, and I were in the Capitol Rotunda for the ceremonies to mark the Day of Remembrance. We watched as flags from each American military unit that had liberated the n.a.z.i death camps were carried in. Mother and I waited, side by side, trying to remember which flag and which unit was Daddy's. Then suddenly we saw it, the Timberwolf flag, with its signature wolf, head up, mouth open, as if in full howl. And we both burst into tears. All those years, we had kept his photographs tucked away in that box, but they were so small, and this horror was so large.

For that moment, as we stood watching that flag and remembering, Daddy was with us.

Then George spoke. "When we remember the Holocaust and to whom it happened," he said, "we must also remember where it happened. It didn't happen in some remote or unfamiliar place; it happened right in the middle of the Western world. Trains carrying men, women, and children in cattle cars departed from Paris and Vienna, Frankfurt and Warsaw. And the orders came not from crude and uneducated men, but from men who regarded themselves as cultured and well-schooled, modern and even forward-looking. They had all the outward traits of cultured men--except for conscience.

Their crimes show the world that evil can slip in and blend in, amid the most civilized of surroundings. In the end, only conscience can stop it, and moral discernment and decency and tolerance. These can never be a.s.sured in any time or in any society. They must always be taught."

We felt such overwhelming sadness that day, yet we felt safe. On that morning, we never contemplated the face of other evils that might slip in.

One of the invitations that crossed my desk that spring was for the opening of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition of Jacqueline Kennedy's dresses. I said yes. The invitation offered the option of bringing guests, so I asked Regan and her daughter, Lara, and Barbara to join me. We arrived at the museum and were met in the receiving line by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, Vogue, as well as the designer Oscar de la Renta and as well as the designer Oscar de la Renta and Caroline Kennedy. It was my first-ever New York designer affair. The last time I had seen Caroline Kennedy was at the opening of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in 1997. I remember that, amid the sea of Carters, Fords, Clintons, and Bushes, she was standing there alone. So I went over and introduced myself, and we began talking. She was just a few weeks shy of turning forty then, eight years older than her mother was when she a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of First Lady of the United States. At thirty-one, Jackie Kennedy was such a young woman when her husband became president, yet she left a rich legacy in decorating and conserving the White House. For me, the most moving story was her last project: the Oval Office. While the president and first lady were on a pre-Thanksgiving trip, the White House staff had installed her newly chosen curtains and other furnis.h.i.+ngs. The trip that Jackie and John F. Kennedy made was to Dallas. Before she returned to the White House, as a widow, the staff removed the new decor, restoring the Oval Office to the way President Kennedy had left it, the one thing in the home that could still be returned to the way it had been.

After the receiving line, we had to ascend the museum's grand marble staircase to reach the exhibition. Someone had cleverly lined the staircase with violinists and, I believe, a few trumpeters. Orchestra members stretched the entire way up. But it was a bit too clever. There was no way to grab on to the handrail. So there I was, holding up my gown and climbing these stairs, hoping that I wouldn't step on my dress and thinking, Please don't trip and fall. And later I heard that women in their long gowns did tumble on the marble stairs. It was instructive to me, though. I never lined the marble White House stairs with anyone, so that all guests could easily grasp the handrail.

We were guided through the collection by Hamish Bowles, the impeccably groomed Vogue Vogue contributor. I gazed at the dark red boucle day dress that Jackie Kennedy contributor. I gazed at the dark red boucle day dress that Jackie Kennedy had worn to give the television tour of the White House, which Americans saw only in black and white, as well as her crepe silk evening gowns and apricot silk dresses. When we came to her inaugural clothes, Hamish said, "This is what one should wear to inaugurations, pearl gray. It isn't turquoise blue or something like that."

I loved Jackie Kennedy's clothes because they were the clothes I had grown up seeing as a young woman. I remember a cla.s.sic pink coat that I bought at Neiman Marcus when I was at SMU, which I kept tucked away in paper for years, hoping Barbara or Jenna might want it when they were grown. But there is something different about seeing another first lady's clothes on display. I knew my inaugural gown would be joining the gown collection at the Smithsonian, but there is more to it than that. There is the strange knowledge that how you look will be critiqued and that what you wear will likely end up on display. Nancy Reagan told me a few years ago that when the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library put together a showing of her clothes, it became the most visited exhibit in the entire library. She laughed when she said it, adding, "You know, those clothes that I was always criticized for?"

I was like all first ladies in that I wanted to look good. I knew how interested the public and the press are in what first ladies wear. Like the women before me, I wanted to look elegant, to appear my best at events here and abroad, and not to glance back later at White House photos and silently cringe. I really felt for Hillary Clinton, who spent years having the press write nasty things about her hairstyles. It unnerved me enough that I paid with our own money for someone to come to the White House and blow-dry my hair almost every morning, just so I could try to avoid a bad hair day. But while some first ladies are genuinely interested in fas.h.i.+on, I'm not one who follows each new season's trends; I have been wearing the same suits, sweaters, and slacks for years. Jackie Kennedy is always going to be more stylish. She was from a part of the country and a part of society that cultivated a certain style and manner. East Coast elegance was exotically enchanting but also out of reach to sweater-set girls in Midland.

The daily hair blow-dries were just one of the monetary costs of living in the White House. Most Americans may not realize that presidents and their families are responsible for their personal costs while they reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that George and I paid for ours out of our own pockets. The presidential room, as it were, is covered, but not the board. The house we had to live in was spectacular. We had luxuries that we could not have afforded in our private life, such as an exquisite home and furnis.h.i.+ngs, a full staff, a chef, and a fully staffed weekend retreat at Camp David.

Presidents and their families are fortunately not responsible for a White House mortgage or the White House utility bills, and it is more than fair that they pay for personal items like every American household.

George and I covered the costs for our own food each month--breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the White House and at Camp David--and if the girls came home or we had friends to dinner or guests who stayed overnight, we were billed for their food as well.

We paid for our dry cleaning and outside laundry, and if we hosted a private party, as we did when George's parents celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, we paid the expenses ourselves, including the hourly wages for the waiters and servers and the setup and cleanup crews, who needed to receive time and a half if the party was held after 5:00 p.m. We did ask the Republican National Committee to pay for the White House Christmas parties, including the holiday parties for the press, and outside nonprofits sometimes a.s.sumed the costs of other events. The Ford's Theatre Society generously used its own funds to help cover White House celebrations of Abraham Lincoln's birthday or the awarding of the Lincoln Prize. Every month, though, we received an itemized bill for our living and personal expenses at the White House.

But there were some costs that I was not prepared for. I was amazed by the sheer number of designer clothes that I was expected to buy, like the women before me, to meet the fas.h.i.+on expectations for a first lady. After our first year in the White House, our accountant said to George, "It costs a lot to be president," and he was referring mainly to my clothes. Of course, I recycled most of my wardrobe, wearing the same dress to the White House correspondents' dinner in the spring and then again to the Congressional Ball in December, but heavily photographed occasions, like state dinners or the annual Kennedy Center honors, required new gowns each time.

There were times when the recycling went too far. One Sunday morning, I arrived at Fox News for an interview with Chris Wallace. Looking around at the photos in the greenroom, I saw that I had worn the exact same suit to my last interview with Chris.