As I walked down the aisle, smiling at Gampy, I was reminded of how eleven years earlier he’d walked down the aisle at my wedding. He’d just begun to show symptoms of Parkinson’s and had grown unsteady on his feet. As he walked toward the altar on our family ranch, wearing a beautiful seersucker suit, he slipped on the wet grass and stumbled. Catching himself, he gestured toward his blue-and-white suit and said, “Seersucker is back!”
At our ceremony, he read the passage “When I was a child, I spoke as a child.” At age eighty-four, he looked at once powerful and frail.
On Barbara’s wedding day, our aunt Dorothy Bush Koch—Aunt Doro to Barbara and me—who embodies the same quiet decency as her father, presided. As soon as the brief, lovely ceremony concluded, it started raining. I joked that it was a sign Ganny was upset that we moved the furniture around so we could have a cocktail hour inside.
We ate a big dinner at the same table where we’d had countless meals in the years before. Gampy sat in between Barbara and me. The last words he ever spoke to her were “You have never been more beautiful.”
At that dinner, I stood up to toast her. As I did, I looked in her eyes and realized that my earliest, greatest love—the person who taught me the most about being in a partnership—had been just down the hall of our three-bedroom ranch house growing up: my sister, with her narrow shoulders, tortoiseshell glasses, and thick-as-rope auburn hair.
I want to toast my beautiful, closest Barbara on the night of her wedding. Tonight, guided by the ocean, the soundtrack of our childhood, you married sweet Craig. In this place that has been an anchor for us—where we crabbed as toddlers with Dad in the “Booney wild pool,” played Sardines with our cousins, read nightly in our Ganny’s lap, and recently read to Gampy—you started your own family.
Barbara, I have loved you every moment of our lives. Having you as my life partner has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.
It isn’t surprising that I’ve loved you—Craig knows, we all do. Barbara is easy to love. I was slightly harder, but, Barbara, you have loved me with patience and grace every day.
People ask a lot: Have you always been so close? And the answer: an easy yes. I have proof. Here is a picture of us as toddlers where I am loving Barbara so ferociously there is a red mark on her neck. My love was not always as gentle as hers.
Craig, having Barbara by your side will make you braver than you ever thought possible. Right here as toddlers we wanted to play by the sea at night, so we escaped our cribs. We were apprehended on the ten-foot seawall and escorted by the Secret Service to our parents, who were eating at this very table. This was the first time we were in trouble with the law. Not the last.
Barbara’s name means “beautiful stranger.” We learned this at an airport, from a key chain, and we loved it. It seemed so grown-up. And appropriate in some ways: her beauty is obvious, and she’s elusive.
But the description isn’t exactly correct. Barbara has never met a stranger she didn’t embrace. Just ask Tequila, from our first grade class, or Josephine, her Swedish best friend she met in Italy. Or ask the little girl in Rwanda in a lavender dress living with HIV, who would change Barbara’s life. Or Heather, Katie, Mama B, Ruth, or James—any number of the thousands of people in Rwanda, Uganda, Newark. This is one reason I’m so proud you’re my sister. And everyone at this table is proud to know you, B.
There is one person we are missing—whose seat is impossible to fill—who would be beaming with pride, and that is our Ganny. She would be thrilled by this wedding. She adored her namesake. And Junior, as Gampy calls her, is more like her namesake than you may guess. Barbara Junior lives with the same strength and compassion that our Ganny lived with.
And the strength part—well, Craig, that’s where you come in. You may need some, entering into this family. Just ask Henry—or Hank, as my Gampy and now the whole family calls him. But, Craigie Baby, as Poppy calls you—it is your kindness and empathy that make you a perfect life partner for my life partner. Henry has been the ham in this family sandwich for fifteen years, and he is more than thrilled that he now has you to be . . . the mayo? Swiss cheese? Choose your filling.
And so, to toast the two of you, I wanted to find words from a great romantic on love, devotion, and commitment. Shakespeare and Neruda weren’t doing the trick. Turns out the perfect words were written by the great romantic Gampy, to our Ganny.
January 6, 1994
For: Barbara Pierce
From: GHWB
Will you marry me? Oops, I forgot, you did that 49 years ago today! I was very happy on that day in 1945, but I am even happier today. You have given me joy that few men know. You have made our boys into men by bawling them out and then, right away, by loving them. You have helped Doro be the sweetest, greatest daughter in the whole wide world. I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara’s husband. Mum used to tell me: “Now, George, don’t walk ahead.” Little did she know I was only trying to keep up—keep up with Barbara Pierce from Onondaga Street in Rye, New York. I love you!
This is what I wish for you: the laughter, devotion, and adoration they felt for each other. The respect and, most of all, the compassion. Craig, I hope in fifty years you’re writing a love letter like this to Barbara. Oh, and, Craig—good luck keeping up with Barbara Pierce Bush from Texas.
A Letter from Ganny on Barbara’s and My Birthday
November 30, 2011
Dearest Jenna and Barbara,
After I heard that Henry (a thoughtful great loving man) gave Gampy’s letter to you early, I felt I could relax and get my letter to you nearer to the actual birthday. So many things to debate. Do I write separate letters? Or do I write one letter to you both? You certainly are two distinctive wonderful people and yet you are closer than any two people I know. So one letter. Maybe this is lazy. It is lazy.
Random thoughts:
God was good to you in that you are so different in physical appearance (both lovely looking), you are both smart and bright, your interests are different and your friends are the same and different, also. And friends . . . you girls have more fabulous friends and you have shared some of them with us. Thank you for that. “Friends are friends forever,” as Michael W. Smith’s song says. How true.
I don’t know if I was supposed to write about your growing pains as normal young people growing up in an abnormal political world. You had them. So what!
Among other things thanks to an amazing mother and father with the patience of saints who set a good example, and especially your own discipline, you have grown into absolutely wonderful caring, giving, loving people. Gampy and I are so proud of you and love you more than you will ever know.
Love and more love,
Ganny
Do Not Speak to Me of “Balance”
My parents showed us unconditional love, and they spent a lot of time with us. My mom drove car pool in our baby-blue minivan with wood paneling. When we were in elementary school, our dad left work daily in time to get home for a run while I rode my bike next to him. We had family game nights to play our favorite, Sorry!, and went to more baseball games than we could count. Sure, there was discipline, but my parents were more likely to find our irreverence amusing than to punish us for it.