I Love You, Ronnie (16 page)

WASHINGTON

Dec. 25 1981

Dear Mrs. R.

I still don’t feel right about your opening an envelope instead of a gift package.

There are several much beloved women in my life and on Christmas I should be giving them gold, precious stones, perfume, furs and lace. I know that even the best of these would still fall far short of expressing how much these several women mean to me and how empty my life would be without them.

There is of course my “First Lady.” She brings so much grace and charm to whatever she does that even stuffy, formal functions sparkle
and turn into fun times. Everything is done with class. All I have to do is wash up and show up.

There is another woman in my life who does things I don’t always get to see but I hear about them and sometimes see photos of her doing them.She takes an abandoned child in her arms on a hospital visit. The look on her face only the Madonna could match. The look on the child’s face is one of adoration. I know because I adore her too.

She bends over a wheelchair or bed to touch an elderly invalid with tenderness and compassion just as she fills my life with warmth and love.

There is another gal I love who is a nest builder. If she were stuck three days in a hotel room she’d manage to make it home sweet home. She moves things around—looks at it—straightens this and that and you wonder why it wasn’t that way in the first place.

I’m also crazy about the girl who goes to the ranch with me. If we’re tidying up the woods she’s a peewee power house at pushing over dead trees. She’s a wonderful person to sit by the fire with, or to ride with or just to be with when the sun goes down or the stars come out. If she ever stopped going to the ranch I’d stop too because I’d see her in every beauty spot there is and I couldn’t stand that.

Then there is a sentimental lady I love whose eyes fill up so easily. On the other hand she loves to laugh and her laugh is like tinkling bells. I hear those bells and feel good all over even if I tell a joke she’s heard before.

Fortunately all these women in my life are you—fortunately for me that is, for there could be no life for me without you. Browning asked; “How do I love thee—let me count the ways?” For me there is no way to
count. I love the whole gang of you—Mommie, first lady, the sentimental you, the fun you and the peewee power house you.

Ronnie’s Christmas letter, 1981.

And oh yes, one other very special you—the little girl who takes a “nana” to bed in case she gets hungry in the night. I couldn’t & don’t sleep well if she isn’t there—so please always be there.

Merry Christmas you all—with all my love.

Lucky me.

—

The first week of March 1983 was stressful, to say the very least. The queen of England had come to California for a rare state visit, and pretty much everything had gone wrong. The coast was drenched in torrential rains. The queen was supposed to come visit us on our ranch in Santa Barbara, but as the days leading up to her visit passed and the rain continued to fall, this looked more and more unlikely. The road leading up to the ranch was a very winding one. There was no visibility at all. When you were in the house, you couldn’t even see out to the fences up front.

We didn’t think she would make it, and we were very disappointed, because she and Ronnie had talked about their riding at the ranch during a weekend we’d spent at Windsor Castle. But the queen was determined. She got a Land Rover and some boots and she came right up. We kept apologizing to her—we’d never seen rain like this before in California!—and she just said, “Don’t apologize. This is an adventure.”

We had lunch at the ranch and then navigated our way back down the hill, and Ronnie had to leave for a meeting in Sacramento. I was supposed to take the queen for a cruise of the California coastline. The whole thing had been planned so that the
Britannia
would sail into San Francisco harbor as the bridge came up and horns played to welcome her. Of course, none of that took place.

At the ranch in Santa Barbara.

We ended up having to stay in a hotel, which the queen almost never does. Everything had to be rearranged. But sometimes, I think, maybe things that aren’t planned come off better than things that are. The visit was very spontaneous and relaxed, in its own way. I remember at one point sitting on a couch after dinner on the
Britannia
with the queen, talking the way any two mothers would talk about their children. That’s not something you get to do every day.

A note from
Air Force One.

Things were less pleasant for Ronnie. That week, new labor statistics had come out showing that despite his first administration’s best efforts, unemployment was holding steady at over 10 percent. While I accompanied the queen to San Francisco, he had toured flooded areas of the Southern California coast. Then, on March 4, our thirty-first anniversary, he rushed north to join the royal couple and me for dinner aboard the
Britannia
in San Francisco Bay.

He must have been completely exhausted. But by the time he walked off the plane, he had this letter ready and waiting. With so much weighing on his mind, it might seem odd that he’d use his few precious minutes of downtime to write to me. But that’s Ronnie!

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE

March 4 1983

Dear First Lady

I know tradition has it that on this morning I place cards—Happy Anniversary cards on your breakfast tray. But things are somewhat mixed up. I substituted a gift & delivered it a few weeks ago.

Still this is the day, the day that marks 31 years of such happiness as comes to few men. I told you once it was like an adolescent’s dream of what marriage should be like. That hasn’t changed.

You know I love the ranch—but these last two days made it plain I only love it when you are there. Come to think of it that’s true of every place & every time. When you aren’t there I’m no place, just lost in time & space.

I more than love you, I’m not whole without you. You are life itself
to me. When you are gone I’m waiting for you to return so I can start living again.

Happy Anniversary & thank you for 31 wonderful years.

I love you                     

Your Grateful Husband

The queen and Prince Philip gave us an engraved silver cigarette box as an anniversary present. I still have it—we had to buy it, of course, when we left the White House. And I still remember Ronnie’s toast during dinner: “I know that I promised Nancy everything in the world when we married, but I don’t know how I could ever top this!”

—

As far as he was concerned, Ronnie always was my husband first, Mr. President second. He never took himself too seriously. His letters, once signed “Your Ranch Hand,” now were signed “Prexy.” In his second term, he started signing off as my “roommate,” too. This grew out of one of my funnier public mistakes.

We’d had to call off the January 1985 inaugural parade because of bad weather. It was so cold in Washington that year that the doctors said if the marching bands had tried to play their wind instruments, the metal would have stuck to their lips. We felt so bad for all the kids who had saved their money to come to Washington to play that we found a place to have them perform indoors instead.

I was supposed to say a few words to start the festivities off. I said my piece, welcomed the bands, then went back to my seat and sat down. After a moment, Ronnie leaned over and said, “I think you forgot to introduce me.” Oops!

If I was going away on a trip without him, Ronnie would set out my vitamin pills in advance and remind me on which days to take them.

I went back up to the podium and said, “I’d like to introduce . . . my husband . . . my roommate,who also happens to be the president of the United States.” The crowd loved it. Ronnie loved it too, and afterward, the nickname stuck.

I can never get enough of kissing you. You are the light of my life. I just worship my Roommate—

Your husband

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

Dear Glamour Puss

Welcome home! I missed you. I won’t be home til 5:20 and we go to the Nat.Air & Space Museum at 8 P.M. This film will be on the 5 story high screen I’ve told you about. It will be sensational—you wait and see. We’ll be home at 9:10 PM.

I love you mucher and mucher every day.

Your Roommate.

If Ronnie and I hadn’t been so close, I don’t know how we would have weathered the many sad and frightening experiences we had during the White House years. They run through my mind now—the shooting, the deaths of my father and mother, my breast cancer, Ronnie’s colon and prostate cancer, the
Challenger
explosion, the marine-barracks bombing in Lebanon and, of course, Iran-contra. Or the other side of the coin, of course, we had the last Russian summit and the signing of the INF Treaty.