I Love You, Ronnie (12 page)
Your Husband of 20 something or other.
Twentieth-anniversary letter.
I’ve always said that my life began when I met Ronald Reagan. Ronnie often said the same thing about me. (“Thanks to you, I’m just eight years old today,” he wrote on our eighth anniversary.) In the years preceding our marriage, he said, he’d felt lost. He hadn’t been able to recognize himself as he made the nightclub circuit, dating starlets and enjoying being Hollywood’s “most eligible” bachelor. He’d felt like he was wandering in the dark.
(He started calling me Senator, as he does in the next letter, after somebody kidded about my running for the Senate. It became a joke for everyone, and Ronnie jumped right on the bandwagon.)
RONALD REAGAN
My Darling Sen.
Two thirds of my life was spent in a holding pattern awaiting the happiest landing ever made: Now it is twenty-one years later—twenty-one years so wonderful I’d do it over and over again if each flight led to you. But I still wouldn’t be able to tell you how much you mean to me.
I just want to start each day by opening my eyes and seeing you and end each day seeing you before I close them. In between times, I’ll just look in my heart.You are always there.
There are no secrets in politics—it’s a well-known fact that the Guv is very much that way about the Sen.
Very much in love—
The Guv
Ronnie always put special thought into his holiday messages. He could write mini-sonnets into the margins of greeting cards. And he never let a holiday go by without a card—or cards.
I’d find them waiting for me in the morning. I’d read and reread them. And, of course, I kept them all. A Thanksgiving card: “To the Woman of My Life—You Saved My Soul.” A Christmas gift card: “If this were diamonds it still wouldn’t pay the interest on the debt of love I owe you.” A birthday greeting: “Life began for me when you were born. . . You are the light of my life and I never want you to go out.” And a beautiful description of our marriage, one Mother’s Day: “It is still like an adolescent’s dream.”
Valentine’s Day always brought a particularly lovely letter.
Feb. 14—1960
Darling Mommie Poo
Feb. 14 may be the date they observe and call Valentine’s day but that is for people of only ordinary luck.
I happen to have a “Valentine Life” which started on March 4 1952 and will continue as long as I have you.
Therefore realizing the importance of this to me, will you be my Valentine from now on and for ever and ever? You see my choice is limited, a Valentine Life or no life because I love you very much.
Poppa
As, of course, did our anniversary.
RONALD REAGAN
March 4, 1963
My Darling
This is really just an “in between” day. It is a day on which I love you three hundred and sixty five days more than I did a year ago and three hundred and sixty five less than I will a year from now.
But I wonder how I lived at all for all the three hundred and sixty fives before I met you.
All my love,
Your Husband
A birthday greeting.
When Ronnie’s duties as governor limited his freedom to go out and find greeting cards, he improvised. He wrote, he joked, he doodled.
RONALD REAGAN
Dear Mommie
From Va. to Calif. it has been Mother’s day, but it’s hard to find a card at 39,000 ft. In fact there aren’t even any flowers up there.
This then is my last resort—a common, old, ordinary letter written at ground level to tell you Happy Mothers Day.—It should be as happy as every day is for me because of you.
I’m happy you are my wife, happy you are a Mommie—I’m just plain happy.
I Love You
Your Guv
(You can just call me Excellency)
RONALD REAGAN
PACIFIC PALISADES
Dear Mommie
No pretty card even—but then no card could possibly tell you how much I love you. In fact I can’t find enough words myself to do that.
So multiply by a billion, double that and that’s only the surface of
how deep it really is—“it” being my love (for) you. (I even start skipping words when I think of it.)
I really love you mucher than that.
I.T.W.W.W. (In the Whole Wide World)
The Guv
Christmas was always a particularly special moment for Ronnie. But it was also a time for fun—and Ronnie had a lot of fun every year scheming, shopping, and trying to surprise me.
RONALD REAGAN
Dear Mommie
The ring is because from the day of my birth my guardian angel intended that someday I’d find you.
The gloves I hope will warm your hands as you have warmed my heart for 25 yrs. + (that means plus). Of course on a really cold day I’ll
hold
your hands.
Box number 3? Well, for years Reno Nevada awarded each year a pair of silver spurs to someone they thought the most of. You are hereby awarded silver spurs for being the person I love more than anything in the whole wide world. This award is permanent.
Merry Christmas and thank you for making every day a holiday for me.
“GuessWho”
P.S. I’ll groom your horse for you too.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNOR’SOFFICE
Dear Poo Pants
It isn’t very original. It doesn’t show much imagination. But then if it was diamond-studded gold it wouldn’t be as great a gift as the gift I got when I got you.
Merry Christmas with all my love.
Your Own Guv
RONALD REAGAN
Dec. 25
Dear Senator,
What to do for some one who just bought “everything” ?
Well just get some more of “everything”!
I don’t suppose Governors should write love letters to Senators, but in this case I’ll make an exception.
Christmas has been a very special day for almost 2000 years. For the last 20 of those years it has been so special it has rubbed off on all the other days of the year. And that’s because the Gov. has the Sen. I love you from the bottom of my heart—
The Guv.
“The Guv” hated the thought of buying me gifts that I wouldn’t like. (“I hope you like it—don’t worry if you don’t—I can always take poison,” he wrote one Christmas.) Rather than risk a big mistake, he would ask my friends if they had ever heard me express an interest in anything. Then my friends would call me for suggestions.
I always did my best to act surprised when I opened Ronnie’s gifts—even though much of the time I wasn’t surprised.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
Christmas 1971
My Dear First Lady
Here it is—Santa Claus time and no surprise for you. We’ve shopped early again (seems we do this more often lately).
Do you know I’ve never been really sure that you ever were surprised? There was always a thought that Amelia or Peg guarded your interests. But it didn’t matter, you always seemed surprised and I’m not one to “look a gift getter in the surprise.”
With nothing to put under the tree I thought of offering you all the stars for diamonds and the ocean breeze for perfume—but you already have those and besides I couldn’t get them under the tree.
I could offer you my heart but I’d have to get it back from you first. There just isn’t any thing to get for some one who already has everything I can afford.
If it truly is more blessed to give than to receive, then perhaps I should talk about what you’ve given me, because that makes you the most blessed person in these here parts.
Your gift to me is uninsurable. No appraiser can put a value on it.
How would he figure the market value of feeling a tingle of excitement and anticipation every time I start for home? Or the way I can’t help but walk fast when I get there, hurrying for the first sight of you? Just waking up becomes a warm glow because you are there—just as the whole house is haunted when you aren’t.
It’s like fruit of the month or a lifetime subscription—a perpetual-motion happiness machine. It starts off fresh and brand-new every day, shining up my whole world.
Thank you for loving me and seeing that I’m smart enough to stay very much in love with you.
Merry Christmas,
Your Husband.
This Christmas letter seems particularly poignant. Our days in Sacramento were coming to an end. Some of Ronnie’s advisers had started talking about his running for president in 1976, but I didn’t believe it. I thought we were leaving politics forever. It seemed like the end of an era.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
Dec. 25–’74
Dear First Lady
As you say—“we’d better use up this stationery.” But “lame duck” or “Ex” you are still my 1
st
Lady—now more than ever.
These two little (and I do mean little) gifts do not necessarily go together as you will plainly see. One is for moving along and the other cozying down. Both however come with all the love I can put together.
You’ll look cute and cuddly in one and gay and darling in “t’other”.
I love you and because of that my Christmas is Merry—How about yours?
Poppa
Back home in the Palisades, Ronnie gave speeches and wrote a newspaper column, while I was busy with the children, their schools, and him. It was nice to be able to concentrate on our family life and each other once again. Ronnie was very happy. As he put it in this next letter, from Christmas 1975, that happiness felt to him like little less than a miracle. It felt that way to me, too.