Riding Rockets

We were all mute. The women in the painting had a striking resemblance to hogs wearing wigs and gowns. They were creatures right off of Dr. Moreau’s island of horrors. As our collective silence was fast approaching embarrassment, Mrs. Bush took the heat off and answered her own question. “This is the ugliest painting I’ve ever seen. The women were part of the First Family, for God’s sake. They could have requested some artistic license. What were they thinking? For my official portrait I intend to get an artist who will make me look good.”

She led us to a room with a view of people waiting to begin their White House tour. The crowd screamed in delight and grabbed their cameras when they saw Mrs. Bush waving. She was a queen who deported herself in every way as a commoner.

She was also a proud mother and grandmother. On every table and mantel were framed photos of her family. I didn’t see a single photo of her posed with any of the multitude of stars she had certainly met in her life. Clearly her VIPs were her children and grandchildren. She spoke of her philosophy of life: “In your old age you will never regret the contract never signed, the trip never taken, the money never earned, but you will definitely regret it if your children turn out poorly because of neglect.” She used Ronald Reagan as an example. “He’s a wonderful man but he has four children who won’t speak to him.” Maybe she was giving us the unsolicited advice because she could see in our eyes how driven we were. If there was ever a collection of men vulnerable to neglecting their families, it was astronauts.

We sat for tea and cookies and she told us stories about some of the people she had met and unusual places she had traveled. She volunteered her thoughts on a controversy in which she was embroiled and that was being given significant press coverage. She had been invited to give the commencement address at Wellesley College, but, after accepting, some of the students had organized a movement to disinvite her. These women considered her a poor role model since her only identity was through her husband. Apparently, for them, being a wife and mother were not qualifying credentials for a commencement speaker. Mrs. Bush was completely gracious and accepting of their dissent, but from the first moment Donna had seen the story in the newspaper she had been furious. Donna had spent her life as a wife and mother and didn’t consider herself a second-class woman for having done so. I worried she was going to offer an opinion to Mrs. Bush along the lines that those Wellesley girls were just a bunch of small-minded, immature bitches, but she maintained her composure. Fortunately Donna didn’t have my hair-trigger mouth.

After tea, Mrs. Bush led us downstairs to finish our tour, giving us a running commentary on the history of the rooms we passed. But she skipped over some recent history I was privy to. An astronaut who had made an earlier White House visit had told of entering a room in the company of Mrs. Bush and being brought to a sudden halt by the overpowering stench of fresh dog shit. Everybody had quickly fixated on the source…Millie’s deposit. The astronaut witness had recounted how a silence as heavy as the odor had enveloped their group. Nobody wanted to acknowledge the obvious, that Millie had desecrated the carpet. But, without missing a beat, Barbara Bush turned to look at her astronaut visitors and jokingly warned, “If I read about this in thePost tomorrow, you’re all dead meat!”

Mrs. Bush would have fit perfectly into our TFNG gang. I could see her at the Outpost and Pete’s BBQ and on the LCC roof. There are some things the trappings of wealth and power and great political office can never dissolve. Among these are the bonds of the military family. As the wife of a WWII naval aviator, Barbara Bush had long ago experienced everything we had lived and were continuing to live…fear, the heartache of hearing “Taps” played over friends’ graves, and consoling grieving widows and fatherless children.

As we walked away, I thought of those dissident Wellesley women. They had been right about one thing—Mrs. Bush shouldn’t have been invited to speak at their commencement merely because she was the First Lady. Any woman could be one of those. Rather, she should have been invited because she was a member of the Greatest Generation, because she had kissed her man off to war and been left to wonder if she would ever see him again, because—as the loving and supportive wife of a WWII naval aviator—she had done her part to save the world. Those were commencement address qualifications for any college, even Wellesley.

Chapter 42

Journey’s End