Spoken from the Heart (30 page)

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 spaces where we had strolled with friends on all those weekend tours. We crossed the sturdy 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 passed them all as if in a blur; there was barely time to glance up at the fresco in the dome, painted to glorify George Washington.

George had wanted to use Washington's Bible, the same Bible that his father had used in 1989, for the bicentennial of George Washington's inauguration as the nation's first president. The Washington Bible had been specially transported under Masonic guard from New York to Washington. 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 Washington'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, Washington, D.C., was spread before us, the vast expanse of the Mall, the tall, spare point of the Washington 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 steamship; 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 pass. 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 balls. 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 choreographic 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 balls; they rode D.C.'s subway system, the Metro, in their tuxes, ball gowns, and high heels.

We had eight balls; 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 space 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 Washington 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 Texas-Wyoming 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 space 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 Washington. 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 space 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 assistant, 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 Dick 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. Dick 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 assets. 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.