Remembering Barbara Bush

It's been a while, blog.  I haven't really forgotten you, but I haven't felt the urge to write in some time!  I wish I could be like the diarists of old who each day took the time to write even a few lines.  Historians of our time will have a tougher time navigating the reams of paper that we will leave in digital form on Facebook, twitter, and instagram.  

And, then over the weekend I watched the funeral of Barbara Bush and read the many eulogies of her as wife of one president and mother of another.  The most moving tribute was a piece in the New York Times explaining that at her core she was a mother.  Jon Meacham, the historian and Bush family friend, called her the mother of the greatest generation and perhaps she was.

I am attracted to her story because in many ways it draws me back to my own past, my parents who were shaped by the Second World War and the 1950s that followed.  I am the same age as one of the Bush children, Neil, younger than George W. and even Jeb (which surprised me).  As a woman of her time, Barbara Bush inspires me.  Maybe it was her not so skinny size, her "I'll be damned if I color my hair", her outspoken (at times) advice to her large and I'm sure sometimes difficult family, her love of swimming, her passion for literacy, her sass, her style, her compassion.  She seems more real to me than some of the other first ladies.  Nancy Reagan, so distant, Rosalyn Carter, so southern and Baptist, Melania Trump, so foreign and wealthy, Michelle Obama, so smart and savvy.  Barbara Bush was someone that I could relate too.  She had that rarest of things, a strong political marriage that survived the death of an infant daughter and the raucous contest that is Texas politics.  She didn't much like to cook and from what I can gather, she wasn't so good at it either.  But, she seemed human somehow.  She was wealthy, yes.  She had a certain style.  She came from east coast money (at least some) and she married well.  But, what I most liked about her is that she felt comfortable, or so it seems to me, in her own skin.  She knew who she was and why she was.  As I commented on Facebook, she showed up and made a difference for good.  She's a worthy role model and one of my heroines in a world that desperately needs them.  Rest in peace, Barbara.  We've got this and your work, although not done, is in the hands of others, myself included.  We are ready for the challenge.  Would that we all make as much difference as I believe you did.