Bush ladies on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal. And the former First Lady, Laura Bush shares her deepest feeling and thought from his childhood, marriage, family and days in the White House.
Mrs. Bush is sharing her life story on Spoken from the Heart
She was lonely for being an only child, she said, “I think it was mainly because I was so aware of how [my parents] wanted other children, and how disappointed they were. And so I was disappointed. I wanted to have those brothers and sisters, too.”
But her house was filled with laugh and love. “My parents were fun and funny and loved each other and liked to be together. And we did everything together, really.”
“It was not really a lonely childhood,” she said, “Even though there were moments of wishing I had brothers and sisters.”
Having friends from hometown that support them at stressful time is “a great comfort to George and me to have our old friends from Midland visit us in Washington, especially at stressful times. They didn’t try to talk about issues; they came to just be there for us. George loves to tell the story of how all his Midland friends would come to the Oval Office and say, ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’ And then they looked at him: [They] couldn’t believe he was there either.”
Mother of two beautiful twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, 28, has raised her daughter to be humanitarians and public servants.
“We need to help children reach beyond themselves and to figure out ways they can help in their communities. When we give children the chance to look out at the world, it gives them a different perspective; they lead happier lives.”
There’s something she learn as she seen her daughters grown into young women and her daughters’ friends, “that young people really do see themselves as citizens of the world, much more so than any other generation.”
And she knows it’s because the advance of communication,
“Our communication is so instantaneous, and so encompassing, from every part of the world. The earthquakes that we’ve just seen, for instance, in Chile and Haiti. At other times in history we would have never known and wouldn’t have a way to reach out. I think that’s one reason so many young people want to serve in some way.”
Have been married for 32 years, she shares her secret for happy and long relationship, she said, “Pick well” for “a very good start.”
“[When we met (with George Bush)] it was like we’d known each other our whole lives, because we had exactly the same background. We’d grown up in the same town. We knew the same people. So our lives were parallel, even though they’d never really crossed. We also had the same values: Family was very important to both of us. And we were both very fortunate to have stable parents, which is such a huge advantage, to have had parents who were stable and interested in their kids. All of those things, I think, were just good indicators that we would be able to stay married.”
“Our personalities complement one another. And we’re very dependent on each other. You know, we just want to be with each other. That’s how we feel most secure. So, I think that — you know, I don’t know if there’s a way you can get to be that way, if — or if there’s something we did that made it that way, or it’s just our personality types.”
She describe George as being deeply sentimental, and she explains more the sweet memories of her about George,
“I remember at our wedding, when he stood up to give the toast, he started to weep. He did the same thing when Jenna got married. He started walking her down the aisle and the whole way he was weeping. And of course, then she starts to cry, and then all of us start to cry. Then everyone does. But it’s sweet.”
As a First Lady she has been and continue to be an advocate for women across the globe, especially women in Afghanistan, “American women are very struck with the contrast between our lives and the lives of women in Afghanistan. Especially after September 11, when we saw that there was a government that forbids girls from being educated.”
“It was hard for us to imagine. I tell the story in the book about giving the radio address about the treatment of women and children by the Taliban. And then that weekend I was in Austin visiting Jenna, and we went to a department store. And the women who sell cosmetics thanked me for it for that radio address. I could tell then how American women want the women in the Middle East to succeed. And they want Afghan women to be educated.”
