Spoken from the Heart (73 page)

In November, as the banking system began to stabilize after its near collapse, George hosted a world economic summit, where there were so many foreign leaders that the White House had to place the translators in a tent on the roof of the East Wing, with wires running through the bottom of the residence and up into the State Dining Room, so everyone could hear what was being said simultaneously. Thirteen languages were spoken at the dinner, and the arrivals alone took close to an hour, because each head of state had to arrive and receive the same recognition of protocol.

December brought the renewed joys of Christmas. I chose a red, white, and blue theme to honor our country during this election year. We recycled many of the decorations from previous seasons, turning old towering Nutcracker statues into flag-waving Uncle Sams; even Santa wore red, white, and blue. We sent ornaments to every member of Congress and asked each representative to select a local artist to decorate them. Three hundred and sixty-nine returned, decorated with paint, fabric, beading, and images of our varied regions.

Mother came for that last Christmas, and as she had done in previous years, she pulled a chair to the very top of the residence stairs and listened to the beautiful sounds of the carolers and bell ringers as their voices and music rose and echoed off the marble below. Each year, aside from the formal parties, we opened the White House on December afternoons and weekends to members of Congress and their guests and every person on the White House staff; we did the same for hundreds more across the government. They were invited to tour the house with family and friends, and we asked choirs and orchestras and carolers from around the nation to perform as the guests walked among the decorations, the garlands, and the trees. Those were the sounds that Mother so loved.

But it was too much for her to spend Christmas Day with us at Camp David. The prospect of getting her from the cabin to the lodge in the cold and ice was too daunting. With a knot of regret, I let her return home to Midland. But we did have our girls and the entire Bush family--George's parents, his siblings, their spouses and children. It would be our last gathering at Camp David, "Camp" as we called it, the place where George's sister, Doro, had married Bobby Koch at the end of Gampy's term. When he left office, she had assumed she would never see Camp again. Instead, when George was inaugurated, Doro was issued a standing invitation to come with us, not just for the holidays but for any weekend.

It was the season for good-byes. George was busy with departure photos for the staff. But he insisted upon adding something else. He invited everyone who worked at the White House--the butlers, the painters, the ushers, the telephone operators, the secretaries, every White House employee--to come to the Oval Office for a photo. And they came, these wonderful people who had been such an important part of our lives for the past eight years. Some had worked at the White House for four decades but had never before been invited into the Oval Office. They entered with tears in their eyes.

We would also be leaving not just close staff but true friends. George's second chief of staff, Josh Bolten, had been a steadfast guiding presence during the difficult months of the Iraq surge and through the economic crisis. He had been with George since 1999, the earliest days of his presidential run. Josh is a fine person, with a wonderful sense of humor and a great and versatile mind. We had treasured his company, and that of his longtime girlfriend, Dede McClure, on our Camp David weekends.

My own staff had a special place in my heart. I remained very close with Andi Ball, my first chief of staff. My second, Anita McBride, had become a confidante and a cherished friend. She and my other staff members had been instrumental in so many accomplishments. Our lives were interwoven far beyond the walls of the office, and it was with real sadness that we watched as this period of shared days came to an end.

Long before the November election, George was determined to make the transition to the new president the most seamless in history. He created a Transition Coordinating Council, to ensure that "each office was left in better shape than when our administration had arrived." It was part of George's interest in the continuity of government, and it was also because we knew how vital a smooth transition is, particularly given the ever-present threat of terrorism and the challenges to the economy. He believed that one of the paramount responsibilities of the president is to do all that he or she can for the next occupant of the Oval Office. Every White House department was instructed to prepare detailed briefing binders for its successors. In my office, the projects team left behind detailed lists of all their contacts at federal agencies, as well as timelines for events and even for producing the White House Christmas card. The correspondence shop left binders filled with sample letters, and we left scheduling information as well. And that practice was repeated across all parts of the administration. The Social Office gathered hundreds of pages of instructions, timelines, and sample invitations to leave behind detailed information for their successors. The same was done for Homeland Security, national security, economic policy, commerce and trade, everywhere that there would be a new team. Because this was also the first presidential transition during a period when the nation was under terrorist threat, the White House held a full Homeland Security exercise, a mock attack on major city subways, bringing together the outgoing and incoming administrations, including National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and his successor, General James Jones, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his successor, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, as well as Fran Townsend, the long-serving assistant to the president for Homeland Security and counterterrorism, so that there would be full continuity for the government and for the American people.

Barack and Michelle Obama came to visit the White House, and while George and the president-elect met in the Oval Office, I gave the next first lady a tour. Upstairs I showed her the dressing room window, with its view across the Rose Garden and into the West Wing, and told her the story of my mother-in-law first pointing it out to Hillary Clinton sixteen years before. I also invited her to come back with her daughters and her mother. She did, in December, and Jenna and Barbara came to show the girls the parts of the house that they had always found the most fun.

As in so many years past, Inauguration Day 2009 was cold. It was also historic, as the nation swore in its first African-American president.

After the inaugural ceremony, we made our last walk down the steps of the Capitol with the Obamas; inside Marine One, Bar and Gampy were waiting, so that they could join us for the final helicopter ride to Andrews Air Force Base, where nearly one thousand of our staff and friends were waiting to bid us a fond farewell.

The love of the Bush family had come full circle; the pride George had felt for his parents, they felt in return for their son. They too had made this journey we were about to begin and had found unexpected joys in the years beyond.

As the helicopter rose over the Capitol, George took my hand. We looked at the city below and out into the vibrant blue January sky, toward home.

Prairie Chapel Mornings

George and me, Crawford, Texas, 2009.
(Photo (c) David Woo)

Late that January afternoon in 2009, we stopped in Midland, where George spoke to a cheering crowd. We had left from Midland to travel to the White House; it was fitting that it be our destination on the journey home. Thirty thousand people were waiting for us on the downtown square. George thanked them for welcoming us. "I am grateful that you all came out," he said, "and I am thankful that I had the honor of being president of the U.S. for eight years," noting that we all offer Barack Obama "our prayers for his success." As the afternoon faded, he said, "The days have been long, but the years are short," adding, "This guy who went to Sam Houston Elementary spent the night in Buckingham Palace.

"The presidency," George said, "was a joyous experience, but nothing compares with Texas at sunset." He paused briefly, then spoke. "It is good to be home." From there our plane carried us to Waco, where four thousand more of our cheering friends lined the edges of the runway.

On that plane ride home to Texas were many of the staffers who had served with us--Josh Bolten, Andy Card, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Andi Ball, and Anita McBride--and also our lifelong friends. From Waco we headed to our ranch with a few of our closest friends. We reached our land, Prairie Chapel Ranch, in the dark. Barbara was with us; Jenna had to return to Baltimore, Maryland, to teach the next morning. George parked his mountain bikes in the garage, and we unloaded the luggage. I was struck by the stillness. There were no staff members, no briefers, no military aides. The grounds were quiet, except for the rustle of the Texas winter wind, the murmur of our own voices, and the soft shuffle of our feet on the crushed stone.

The next morning we were up, as we always are, before dawn, and for the first time in eight years, George made the coffee himself before he brought it into our bedroom.

Outside, as the day broke, our land was the color of dull wheat, and the prairie grasses were dry and brown, waving in the wind. The sky, when the sun rose behind the clouds, was a leaden gray, wrapping snug above us and beautiful in its repose. We could drive out and see cattle grazing in our pastures, hear the water rushing down in the canyons. We saw where we wanted to plant blackberry vines and where the bluebonnets would begin blooming in the spring. We gazed upon the spot where Jenna and Henry were married; each morning from our kitchen table I can see the warm glow of the limestone cross where they exchanged their vows.

There are still physical reminders at Prairie Chapel Ranch of our eight years in the White House: Secret Service watch huts remain scattered around the edges of our house, and a giant treetop enclosure, a place where sharpshooters once paced, scanning the perimeter for trouble, stands draped in vines. Someday it might make a wonderful fort for a grandson or granddaughter.

And there are other reminders. We live behind gates now; our Dallas house has one at the end of its curving block. Until the gate was installed, carloads of the curious would wind down our dead-end street, running their tires over our neighbors' lawns, to get a glimpse of our new home. Bar and Gampy faced the same problem when they returned to Houston, and the Texas legislature passed a special law allowing gates to be installed on the residential streets of former presidents. George and I are the second-generation beneficiaries.

At home our pace of life has hardly slowed; after the White House, requests and invitations continue unabated. There are many days when, just as during the presidency, nearly every minute is accounted for. We live by the block schedule, a 6:00 a.m. flight to Florida or Pennsylvania, and then on to Minnesota or Indiana. I am asked to give speeches and to serve on charitable advisory boards, like that of the Salvation Army or of the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture; George speaks, works on building his presidential library and institute, and has joined with Bill Clinton to coordinate a national relief effort for earthquake-ravaged Haiti. There is much meaning and purpose to be found in a postpresidential life.

I am aware, though, that a completely normal life remains just out of reach. At the airport with my mother, well-wishers ask for pictures, and I stop to smile underneath the dangling Hertz Car Rental sign. In restaurants, in passenger terminals, amid the shelves of a bookstore, strangers approach me like long-lost friends, or rotate their heads to offer up smiles, second glances, or polite stares. At times I wonder when this curiosity will fade, when the novelty of our lives will diminish, and George and I will occupy more of the background.

I wonder too about the passions that seem to be so permanently entrenched in all sides of American politics, where elected officials become near instantaneous celebrities, and crowds are expected to swoon as teenagers once did for the Beatles almost half a century ago. Celebrity is a particularly poor model for politics. At the White House, there is no off-season hiatus or a director to yell, "Cut, that's a wrap." The demands of not just the nation but of the world are fierce and unrelenting. I am certain that all presidents have moments when they simply ask God, "Please do not let anything happen today."

We have lived through four seasons now on our ranchland, a spring bloom of wildflower carpets and flowering prickly pear; the baking heat of summer, when the air shimmers and even the cicada whine slows to accommodate the stifling air; a fall of crisp mornings and brilliant colors; and a winter when at night we can hear the howls of the coyotes and the rush of biting prairie winds. Four seasons. Hardly enough time to reflect on eight years, let alone a lifetime. When I was born, there was a blacksmith shop on one of Midland's main streets; today, our news is disseminated via blogs.