each knife, fork, and spoon was perfectly placed at each setting.

After well over one thousand years of kings in England, there is a rare perfection to royal events that is truly breathtaking. Even the queen's china is revered. I remember the American amba.s.sador to Liberia telling me the story of the British evacuation from Monrovia in the 1990s, when Liberian rebel forces began advancing on the capital city.

As British diplomats prepared to abandon their cliff-side emba.s.sy, they opened the amba.s.sador's supply of champagne and announced that they must destroy the china. The porcelain was too heavy to carry out, and it is against British law to allow the queen's china to fall into enemy hands. With champagne flutes in one hand and plates and teacups in the other, everyone stood on the balcony and hurled the pieces onto the cliffs below.

The royal family is not without its quirks. When Prince Charles and Camilla, d.u.c.h.ess of Cornwall, came to visit us, they requested gla.s.ses of ice before we began a long receiving line. The staff dutifully produced them, and the prince removed a flask from his pocket and added to each a small splash of what I presume was straight gin, so that they might be fortified before the hour or more of shaking hands.

The night of the royal state dinner for George and me at Buckingham Palace, I donned a Carolina Herrera burgundy dress, a fitted velvet top over a tulle skirt. Barbara Bush had loaned me the "Bush family jewels," diamonds and pearls. The next evening we reciprocated the hospitality of the queen and Prince Philip with a dinner at the American amba.s.sador's residence, Winfield House, where the amba.s.sador's dog roamed freely through the room. He began barking as George stood to give his toast, and Cathy Fenton, our social secretary, was left to scramble to scoop up the dog and remove him from the room so he wouldn't howl or yap when the queen rose and lifted her gla.s.s. After dinner Andrew Lloyd Webber and a small ensemble performed in honor of the queen. Our last stop was Sedgefield, England, Tony Blair's childhood home and his longtime parliamentary const.i.tuency, the British electors who placed him in Parliament. There we dined at the Dun Cow Inn with some of the Blairs' oldest friends.

The following week was Thanksgiving, which we were to spend at the ranch with Bar and Gampy and Barbara and Jenna, but for weeks I had known that George would likely miss our family feast. He was making a surprise visit to Baghdad to see the troops.

I knew the exact moment he was supposed to land, and I immediately turned on the television to wait for the news. An hour pa.s.sed. Then two hours. Still there was no film footage, no live feed. Late in the morning, I called the Secret Service agents' outpost on the ranch and asked, "Where's the president?" The agent in charge replied, "We show him in the ranch house, ma'am." I quickly said, "Oh, I'll go look again." The Baghdad trip was so secretive that even our own agents didn't know where George was. Condi Rice's Secret Service detail had spent the entire night in a car, with the motor running, outside our little clapboard house, where she usually stayed when she was in Crawford. They had no idea that she was on her way to Baghdad. A commercial plane in the sky that glimpsed Air Force One was told it was mistaken. When I did finally see the footage of George on television, I called Lisa Gottesman, the mother of George's personal aide, Blake. He was in Iraq, serving the troops from the chow line, alongside the president. I told her to turn on the television and see her son. She was in her kitchen making Thanksgiving dinner.

When she looked at the screen, she burst into tears. Not because she was scared but because she was so proud of her son for having gone with George.

Our soldiers were thrilled to see George, who served a bunch of them supper in the chow line, visited, and ate a Thanksgiving meal. But it was he who was most grateful.

His was a small gesture. Their service, every day, was the large one.

The December season was subdued that year. Every White House has had parties, even in wartime. The Lincolns hosted gatherings that lasted until the early hours of the morning. Eleanor Roosevelt installed an elaborate swing set on the White House grounds for her granddaughter's sixth birthday in 1933, during the height of the Great Depression.

Lyndon Johnson ended the cycle of mourning for John F. Kennedy with a spur-of-the- moment decision to invite Congress over for a Christmas party. Layers of black crepe were removed and evergreens and poinsettias placed around the house. The kitchen rushed to prepare food and, at Johnson's request, mixed gallons of spiked punch.

This year we knew that, in many homes, families were missing a father or a mother, a son or a daughter, who was fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. We held our annual children's party for military children who lived in or near Washington. Roland Mesnier, the pastry chef, displayed his cake-making skills, entertaining them with fabulous sweet creations. For our holiday theme, I chose "A Season of Stories," featuring favorite timeless storybook characters. The White House Christmas tree was decorated with storybook character ornaments that my mother-in-law had used over a decade before.

There is great pleasure to be had in giving new life to old ornaments, just as many families over the generations do on their own trees. To adorn our annual card, I chose an image of the Diplomatic Reception Room, with a warming fire and George Washington above the mantel, painted by artist Barbara Prey. Our verse came from the book of Job: "You have granted me life and loving kindness; and your care has preserved my spirit."

On December 13, a grimy, unkempt Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a hole in his hometown of Tikrit. We had hope, but we were wary. Next year, 2004, would be another year of war abroad. At home, it was a presidential election year.

There would be no other political races after this one. Ten years after George had sought the Texas governorship, he would be running in his last election, this time for a second term as president. Come January of 2005, we would either be leaving or have four final years to serve. Some call serving in the White House a "burden" or a "sacrifice."

The presidency can be, at moments, difficult, and in exchange for the enormous privilege of holding the office, you give up your privacy for a lifetime. But I believe it is a deep honor to be given the trust of the American people. For George and for me, it was a constant blessing to have the opportunity to witness, so often, the very best of America. I enjoyed this last campaign, with its enormous rallies and the chance to once again crisscross the country. I am grateful too to the tens of thousands of people who came out and cheered, to those who waited for hours to shake our hands on the rope lines and who said, "We are praying for you." I took strength and solace from their words.

Spot, our beloved springer spaniel, died that winter. I was away when she suffered a stroke. The only humane thing to do was put her to sleep, but George waited for me to return, so that I too would have a chance to say good-bye. The evening before Spot was going to be put down, George lovingly carried her out to the South Lawn, on whose lush gra.s.s she had rolled as a puppy and where, even as an old girl, she loved to chase after b.a.l.l.s. George laid her down and then got down on the gra.s.s himself, encircling her in the chill dusk with the warmth of his body and gently stroking her head for a final farewell.

Spot had been born in the White House to Bar's dog, Millie. She was the only dog to live and die in the White House, with two different presidents.

There was more private sadness to come.

On Valentine's Day, I hosted a dinner for some of our old friends from Midland in the Red Room. It was a dinner for Cathie Blackaller, my old next-door neighbor from Hughes Street, who was dying of metastatic breast cancer. On New Year's Day in Austin, Regan Gammon, Peggy and Ronnie Weiss, Cathie, and I had met for brunch. I told them that I wanted to do a mini-Midland reunion at the White House for a few friends, and

Cathie, who used to sneak around outside with me in our pajamas on sleepover nights back when we were teenagers, said, "Why don't you do it sooner rather than later?" I heard her words, and I organized it for Valentine's Day. There were fourteen of us, including Mike Proctor, George's childhood friend. Cathie came in a wheelchair, with her scalp wrapped in a scarf, and Ronnie pushed her around. I seated her next to George, who kept her laughing all evening. That weekend we went to art galleries and enjoyed Washington. It was to be our last visit. Cathie died in April, at fifty-eight years old.

On April 28, CBS News' 60 Minutes II 60 Minutes II broadcast the first images from a prison broadcast the first images from a prison named Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. They showed naked Iraqi prisoners being subjected to disgusting and degrading abuse by the American soldiers a.s.signed to guard them. A New Yorker magazine article followed two days later with more gruesome images. I magazine article followed two days later with more gruesome images. I remember sitting with George over dinner as we did many nights upstairs in the White House, just the two of us, talking. George was nearly physically sick to think that any American troops could have behaved in this manner. He was angry too. "Laura," he said, "I have to know how this was ever allowed to happen and to make sure that it never happens again." There are times when the system of command fails, when soldiers fail their junior officers, when junior officers fail their senior officers, and when senior officers and their layers of civilian leadership at the Defense Department fail. Tens if not hundreds of people in authority across the system had not looked hard enough, had not done their duty. Suddenly the sacrifice, character, and hard work of more than 100,000 American troops in Iraq was being jeopardized by a few deranged men and women. It sickened and devastated both of us.

After two years of meeting on mountaintops, in 2004 the G8 came to the United States. George and I chose to host the leaders of the world's largest economies on Sea Island, Georgia. I invited the presidents' and prime ministers' wives--including Cherie Blair, Lyudmila Putina, Bernadette Chirac of France, and Sheila Martin of Canada--and created a special program for them. Later G8 meetings would do the same; in Germany, Angela Merkel's husband, Professor Joachim Sauer, put together a seminar on G8 population demographics for visiting spouses.

I took our group of wives bird-watching along a deserted beach, although they were most interested in seeing an alligator that made its home on the island's golf course.

Lyudmila went swimming several times in the Atlantic's churning waves. The spouses'

"work session" featured a roundtable and luncheon to which I invited Dr. Habiba Sarabi, the minister of women's affairs in Afghanistan; and two Iraqi women, the minister of displacement and migration and an Iraqi Fulbright scholar; as well as Paula Nirschel, the wife of the president of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. Paula had become galvanized by the plight of Afghan women, and in January of 2002, she woke in the middle of the night with an idea, to start scholarships for Afghan women at U.S.

universities. Within two years, eleven women from Afghanistan were studying in the United States on full scholarships, and Paula had raised the money to cover their incidental expenses. At the summit's conclusion, Bernadette Chirac told us that France would build a maternity hospital for women in Afghanistan.

That spring Jenna and Barbara graduated from college, one day apart. We headed first to Austin for a celebratory dinner with Mother, Regan and Billy Gammon, and

Jenna's friends at a local restaurant. The next night we were in New Haven, celebrating Barbara's graduation with a party at Dean Richard Brodhead's house--he was a friend and former cla.s.smate of George's. The only damper on the celebrations was George's nose, which he had sc.r.a.ped when his bike tire hit some loose soil and he toppled over. In all our photos, he is sporting a perfectly placed red mark. By the end of May, for the first time in four years, our girls came home to live.

A couple of months before school ended, Jenna had written a heartfelt letter to her dad, saying that she wanted to work for him in this, his final political race. She told George that she was tired of "hearing lies about you," and she wanted to help others to see "the Dad I love." Both Jenna and Barbara signed on with the Bush-Cheney campaign.

It was, they said, their first campaign and also their last chance to volunteer for their dad.

They answered phones in the headquarters and flew with us to campaign stops. By the fall the girls were going out and giving speeches on their own. We had the magic of watching the race unfold through their eyes. The constant rush of a full-throttle presidential campaign was new for them. They had been little girls when Gampy ran; they had been college freshmen, adjusting to their new, independent lives during George's first White House race. Now they would tear up when crowds of ten or twenty thousand roared in support of their dad.

Their friends came too. Many from Yale and the University of Texas moved to Washington to help on the campaign. Barbara would get e-mails from college friends with whom she had never discussed politics. They wrote, "I'm in New Hampshire" or "In New Jersey, campaigning for your dad."

I was so proud of the young women Barbara and Jenna had become, and to see how much they wanted to help their father. Both of them knew the world that was visited on presidential children. They had experienced its many privileges, the thrills of foreign travel, the glamour of meeting heads of state. But there are sacrifices as well, starting with the heightened scrutiny of their own lives. A few times they had strangers accost them on the street and scream profanity-laced epithets about their father and their family.

They did not tell me about it when it happened, only much later. They knew the strains that George was under; they wanted to protect us. I would not wish what was said to them on any presidential child, or the child of any candidate for public office. But I fear that we have crossed a personal boundary in American political life, a boundary that we may not be able to recross. And the first crossing of that boundary began in the final month of the 2004 campaign.

The 2000 and 2004 national campaigns had a dividing line question. It was invariably a question on a social issue where the press made a concerted effort to find places where my views might diverge from my husband's. During the 2000 race, the media questions usually led, in various guises, back to the issue of abortion. Lisa Myers of NBC was the first to raise it, in the summer of 2000. The day before the 2001 inauguration, Katie Couric went further: Did I want Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade to be "overturned"? to be "overturned"?

Hillary Clinton had been outspoken about White House policy and often commented on political decisions and politics. For eight years she had been a highly visible advocate in her husband's administration, so there was a belief on the part of the media that, even though I was not an elected official, they were ent.i.tled to ask me about policy, and also a curiosity about whether I would weigh in on policy with George. There was, from the start, a desire by some in the press and many of the pundits to discover any points of disagreement between us. It was an odd sort of Washington parlor game; I should have recognized it when I got the very first abortion query.

I knew the Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade question was coming; Katie had already asked me two question was coming; Katie had already asked me two other questions about abortion in the minute before. I thought of Barbara's and Jenna's shock when, as young girls, they first learned what abortion is. They knew how much George and I had longed for children, how much they were wanted. Talking with them around our small kitchen table, I, who had come of age during the bitter fights over Roe Roe v. Wade, was also a bit shocked at their surprise and disbelief. was also a bit shocked at their surprise and disbelief.

On the issue of abortion, I have always been struck by the deep divide between the sides. And how rarely the alternative of adoption is raised. We have so many friends and family members who found their children through adoption; George and I were fully expecting to be one of those couples as well. Today, for women in their twenties, thirties, and forties, infertility is the issue that is the most personal to them; it is the private struggle that breaks their hearts.

We are a nation of different generations and beliefs, seeing issues through different eras and different eyes. While cherishing life, I have always believed that abortion is a private decision, and there, no one can walk in anyone else's shoes.

When Katie Couric raised the issue of Roe v. Wade, Roe v. Wade, I knew George's views, and I I knew George's views, and I knew what the federal law is. I also knew the religious objections and the personal anguish of women on both sides. The simplest interpretation of her question was, Did I, as an incoming first lady, want to start off my husband's term by declaring that an existing Supreme Court ruling should be overturned? But the issue is so much more complex than that. Those were the split-second thoughts that filtered through my mind.

Finally, to the question Did I think Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade should be overturned? I answered no, should be overturned? I answered no, and of course, that one word became the lead headline.

In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage. Before the election season had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never have imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead.

Over twenty-four years, I had been at every Republican convention: Detroit, Dallas, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, Philadelphia, and now New York. Once again the entire Bush family joined us, making it in part a mini-reunion of siblings, in-laws, cousins, and children and grandchildren. The Republican National Committee had chosen New York as its site in part to make a defiant stand against the terrorists. They wanted to show the world that the city had rebounded and that political leaders were not afraid to pack the hotels and eat in the restaurants. Being in the city reminded me how completely our country came together after 9-11, when for a time personal pa.s.sions were put aside and we had a common care and a common purpose. Now I began to feel the country separating along new seams.

The campaign was highly personal for me in other ways too. In addition to my girls, I traveled with some of the families who had lost their loved ones on the morning of 9-11. Cheryl McGuinness, the widow of the copilot Tom McGuinness, whose hijacked plane had been flown into the World Trade Center, campaigned with me, as did David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer, one of the heroes of Flight 93. They did not, in the heat

of a campaign, want the threat of terrorism to be forgotten.

Amid the rallies, speeches, and debates, George and I never forgot the sacrifice of our own troops at war. On almost every swing across the United States, George met with families who had lost sons or daughters, husbands or wives, or fathers or mothers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many times I joined him; sometimes I visited with the families on my own. We met in stadium holding rooms and also on nearby military bases, any location that would give us a bit of privacy. We were there to thank and comfort them, to make sure that they were getting everything they needed from the Department of Defense or Veterans Affairs. But mostly we came to listen. Many of the families would show us photos, would tell us stories of the loved ones they had lost. They talked about a son's favorite sports teams, what position a daughter had played in high school. They talked about a brother's hobbies or pets, what a husband had said when he held his newborn son or daughter for the first time. They wanted us to know their loved ones as living people and to know the warmth and value of their lives. And I was struck by how similar their losses were to the losses of the families of 9-11. We came away humbled by these families' courage and sacrifice. There is no compensation for such a loss; we carried their stories in our hearts.

The same was true of our visits to the wounded at Walter Reed, Bethesda Naval, and Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. We would see soldiers and Marines who had lost limbs and were asking to return to duty. We saw their spouses and small children cl.u.s.tered around their bedsides, and middle-aged mothers who had left their jobs and driven across half the country or flown from home with little more than the clothes on their backs to rush to the hospital and be there for their injured sons or daughters. We saw the hideous burns of IED bombs, and soldiers and Marines whose brains had been damaged beyond full repair. We saw their suffering. And I always knew when George had gone alone to visit the wounded or the families of the fallen. He was quiet, a deafening kind of quiet. And the grief shone in his eyes.

The last presidential debate of the 2004 election was held in Tempe, Arizona, on October 13 and was moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News. Bob is from Texas and has always been a straight shooter. His brother, Tom, a Democrat, had been one of our partners in the Texas Rangers, and George named him amba.s.sador to Australia and later to j.a.pan.

I was nervous before this debate, just as I was before every debate. Senator John McCain and his wife, Cindy, were with us in the holding area. The night before, for a brief respite, they had taken us to their favorite Mexican restaurant in Phoenix.

When George sat down to collect his thoughts, John, meaning well, went over and said, "Relax. Relax," which of course I knew would most likely distract George and make him anything but relaxed. George walked out onto the stage in a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie. John Kerry was wearing the same thing, except a slightly darker red tie. It was as if they had read the same handbook, what to wear to a debate. Jenna and Barbara were sitting on either side of me. We all heard Bob say, "Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a choice?" John Kerry began his answer by saying, "I think if you were to ask d.i.c.k Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Beside me, Jenna and Barbara gasped. They were utterly stunned that a candidate would use an opponent's child in a debate. John Kerry's statement did not seem like some offthe-cuff remark. His running mate, John Edwards, had also mentioned Mary during his vice presidential debate with d.i.c.k Cheney, the week before. Lynne Cheney was rightly furious to see her daughter be used by these men in a calculated attempt to score political points. Lynne called it "cheap and tawdry," and it was.

Seven days later I was the one in the campaign spotlight. In a brief interview, Teresa Heinz Kerry was asked by USA Today USA Today if she would be different from me as first if she would be different from me as first lady. These are the trick questions of politics. They may seem benign coming off a reporter's lips, but they are minefields for whoever answers. Teresa began by saying, "Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her, which is good." Had she ended at that sentence, there would have been no headline. But instead she continued, "But I don't know that she's ever had a real job--I mean since she's been a grown-up." Of course, Teresa had no idea that I had worked as a teacher and a librarian from 1968 until I married George, in November of 1977. Her husband's campaign issued an apology the same day. I was never offended. But from then on, at political rallies, I would see women holding signs: "I never did anything either, I'm a teacher" or "I don't do anything either, I'm a librarian."

Although the network news exit polls predicted that John Kerry would win, they were wrong once again. George and d.i.c.k Cheney won reelection by over 3 million votes.

In those months together out on the trail, we grew even closer as a family. And the 2004 race would ultimately add to our little foursome. During the campaign Jenna met another campaign aide, a young man from Virginia named Henry Hager. In May of 2008, they would marry under a sunset sky by the little lake at our ranch.

When Bill and Hillary Clinton entered the White House, Sat.u.r.day Night Live Sat.u.r.day Night Live debuted a few particularly cruel skits aimed at their then twelve-year-old daughter, Chelsea. The Clintons took a hard line, and the press was shamed into leaving Chelsea alone. The press did largely the same for Barbara and Jenna, although reporters from the tabloids and from more mainstream publications frequently called their friends, trying to entice them to talk about the girls. None ever did. But a postscript to the 2004 campaign was that it changed, perhaps irrevocably, how the families, especially the children, of national candidates are treated. The strategy of making Mary Cheney's private life an issue failed with the voters in November of 2004. But in the years since, it has become acceptable to mock candidates and their families, and other elected officeholders, in highly personal ways; David Letterman feels free to ridicule Sarah Palin's teenage daughters, and the audience laughs. That is the legacy of the 2004 campaign.

For the holidays that year, I chose the theme of seasonal music, and scattered across the White House we had scenes depicting our favorite songs, from "Frosty the Snowman" to "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." In the front hallway, we created our own winter wonderland of snow-flecked trees with glittering icicle lights, a look that Nancy Reagan from sunny California had also loved. The Secret Service allowed us to resume tours, and some 44,000 people were able to come through the house to see the decorations. We hosted another 9,000 guests for the receptions, among them many military children and personnel.

We were at Camp David for Christmas Day when, deep under the Indian Ocean floor, the tectonic plates shuddered and the seabed cracked in the second largest earthquake in recorded history.

The entire planet vibrated from its force. Above, in the seawater, the energy from the quake unleashed a series of waves. The water began rushing toward sh.o.r.e, traveling as fast as an airplane, at speeds of some five hundred miles per hour. Off the coastline the pace of the water gradually slowed. Its power changed from speed to height, until it formed a wall of water that was in some places more than ten stories tall. In Thailand people on the beach saw the ocean race back, sucked into the tidal force of the wave.

Then the water rushed forward. When it reached land, it crashed with the force of a small nuclear explosion. The tsunami was as high as one hundred feet, and it devastated not just southern Asia but the East African coast as well. Ultimately, more than 200,000 people in fourteen countries were killed. Thousands were drowned; many were sucked into the giant undertow and washed away. George and I watched the early television footage in horror, and he immediately asked his father and Bill Clinton to spearhead a fund-raising and relief effort in the United States. American citizens contributed more than $1.8 billion, and the U.S. government dispatched a total of $841 million in aid. Day after day we heard the stories of devastation: villages where only a few residents remained alive, survivors who clung to palm trees and waited with broken legs and arms, husbands and wives, parents and children of whom one remained and one was swept away.

There were no early warning systems for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, just as there are none for earthquakes. But for other natural disasters, we could be confident that warnings could go out hours or even days before they arrived at our sh.o.r.es. In 2004 alone, four hurricanes had hit Florida in a period of six weeks. Two were Category 3 hurricanes, and one was a Category 4, the worst storm to arrive on the U.S. mainland since 1992. Forty-five people in six states died as a direct result of those four storms.

Always, though, most of the people in their paths had fled to safety.

On January 6, George and I held a black-tie sixtieth-anniversary dinner for Ganny and Gampy. We had begun preparations for it before the election, not knowing if we would be packing to leave the White House or planning to stay. The singing Army Chorus performed, led by the moving ba.s.s singer, Alvy Powell, and we toasted Bar and Gampy's extraordinary marriage. One of their longtime friends, David Rubenstein, raised his gla.s.s and noted that Barbara and George Bush were the first presidential couple to reach the milestone of sixty years of shared life.

On her visit Bar also replaced her official White House portrait. She had never liked the image that had been painted of her; she and I both thought that it was flat and dull. When Bar mentioned this to the head White House usher, Gary Walters, he said with characteristic pragmatism, "Why don't you do something about it?" So Bar had a second portrait painted, and this one did capture her sparkle and wit. We proudly watched as her new and improved portrait was hung, proving that even first ladies can have a second act after they have supposedly been "immortalized."

Inauguration Day 2005 dawned cold and snowy. A light dusting fell over the Capitol, coating the dull winter gra.s.s in white. By the time George stepped onto the platform, a dazzling sun had broken through, but the air was still cold. Gampy spent the afternoon in a White House tub, trying to warm up. I later heard that the German amba.s.sador, a big fan of Alpine skiing, described that morning, sitting in the shady

section for diplomats, as "the coldest I have ever felt." I felt the cold too, but I was focused on George's words. His second inaugural address was a stirring discussion of freedom, not our unique American vision of freedom but the concept of freedom at its most fundamental. "America," he said, "will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies."

He spoke of our own nation: "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself--and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character."

George believes in the capacity of human beings to change their lives and the lives of others for the better. He believes in the generosity of the human spirit. And he believes that everyone, no matter what his or her circ.u.mstances, deserves a chance. I believe it as well. His inaugural words and ideals would inspire me in the four years to come.

My mother missed the family inaugural portrait. When I went to her room to get her, she was standing out in the hallway, not fully dressed, with rollers still in her hair. I knew at that moment that I should have had someone with her the whole time; the independent, confident woman who had been at the 2001 inauguration was gone. Travel was hard for her. She could no longer get on or off the plane una.s.sisted. She visited less frequently during our second term, and when she came, my longtime Midland friend Elaine Magruder accompanied her.

In April of 2004, before the campaign had kicked into high gear, I'd cleared my schedule and gone home to Midland to help Mother move out of the last house that Daddy had built for her. Together, Mother and I packed up her belongings. As an only child, had I waited, I would have been doing it alone. We laughed over what we found in boxes or in closets. She moved her best things into her apartment in her new retirement home. The rest we gave away or I sent to Crawford. Mother was still thrifty too, cutting down "perfectly good" draperies to fit in her new, small living room. We hung her pictures on the walls and arranged her dwindling collection of furniture for what I knew would be the last time.

Two months later I was reminded again of the pa.s.sage of time when President Ronald Reagan died and we sat with Nancy Reagan in her grief. I listened to the words of praise from many who had once mocked President Reagan. In the intervening years, they had rea.s.sessed his life and his legacy. Now he was seen as the man who had stood up to the Soviet Union and begun the end of the decades-long nuclear stalemate that was the Cold War. In those June days following his death, Reagan was hailed as a great statesman by many commentators, political opponents, and historians who had derided him during his lifetime.

We had our own transition as 2005 dawned. A second Scottish terrier, two-monthold Miss Beazley, a relative of Barney's, joined us in the White House. George had a new valet, Robert Favela, who grew up outside El Paso; the U.S. Navy had posted him to work for George in the White House. In an amazing coincidence, Robert had joined the Navy with his best friend, Carlos Medina. Carlos's parents owned the four-square orangebrick house in Canutillo that had been Grammee and Papa's home, where Grammee had laid each brick by hand.

Condi Rice was departing the West Wing for the State Department, as secretary of state. The new national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, is one of the nicest men I have ever met. His even temperament, dedication, and unmatched sense of fairness and balance made him a perfect advisor, and his compa.s.sion makes him a great person.

Inside the White House, Karl Rove was named deputy chief of staff. Karl had been with us in the trenches of Republican politics for years. Not only did we respect his thoughtful and intuitive understanding of the political world, but his interests spanned well beyond vote counts and elections. As a person, Karl is funny and warm. He was invaluable to George as an advisor and would remain one of our closest friends.

My chief of staff, Andi Ball, who had been with me for a decade, since our first days in the Governor's Mansion and through the horrors of 9-11, and who had become a treasured friend, was going home to her husband in Texas. Replacing her would be the very talented Anita McBride, who had worked for Ronald Reagan and Gampy, and had most recently been at the State Department. We had a new social secretary, Lea Berman, a warm and gracious hostess; and I already had a second, sweet a.s.sistant, Lindsey Lineweaver. My first, the always cheerful Sarah Moss, had departed before the campaign and was now the married Sarah Garrison.

When I interviewed Anita, I told her there was one thing I wanted to do above all else: I wanted to travel to Afghanistan.

I had wanted to go to Afghanistan for years. My regular meetings in the United States with Afghan teachers and parliamentarians, lawyers and judges, as well as my work with the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council, had heightened my interest in seeing the country for myself.

I had tried to visit in previous years, but there were either security concerns or problems with planning. I did not want to divert vital military a.s.sets, such as helicopters or security, from the battlefield to accommodate one of my trips. I did not want people in our military to have to pay attention to me when they had other jobs and other duties. We needed to pick an optimum time for our military, but I was eager to go.

All the trip planning was done in secret, in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the same underground set of rooms where we had taken shelter on the evening of 9-11. A few representatives from the Secret Service and the White House Military Office worked with Anita on the arrangements; as did Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs; and Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin. Andy Card, George's chief of staff, had signed off on the trip, but on my staff, only Anita knew. The trip was so cla.s.sified that she couldn't tell her own husband.

We had decided that I would travel to the Afghan capital of Kabul on the day of the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council meeting. The council, a unique public-private partnership that George and Afghan president Hamid Karzai had established in 2002, meets twice a year, once in Washington and once in Kabul. Through the council, American women partner with women in Afghanistan to share their expertise in education, business, politics, the law, and health care. Among its accomplishments the council has provided opportunities for Afghan women to open businesses, secure an education for themselves and their children, and begin to a.s.sume leadership roles inside Afghanistan. This is a sea change in a nation where, under the Taliban, women who had been widowed or left without fathers or brothers following years of war could not leave the house because they had no male relative to accompany them.

Many of the security a.s.sets that I would need would already be in place for the council's March meeting in Kabul. I could slip in under their cover. And that is exactly what we did. The members of the press who would accompany me on this trip did not know where we were going until thirty-six hours before our departure, and they were sworn to secrecy. American members of the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council were told that I was coming only after their plane had finished a refueling stop in England.

My plane left Andrews Air Force Base at 10:15 in the morning. Traveling with me were Anita; Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education; and Paula Dobriansky. To reach Kabul we would cross nine and a half time zones in fourteen hours. We would land at 11:35 a.m. local time at Bagram Airfield, our plane twisting like a corkscrew as we descended to evade any rounds of insurgent gunfire. Waiting to greet me upon arrival were a group of allied commanders from the United States, Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, Australia, Egypt, Estonia, and France. All had troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

I had a chance to personally thank the commanders before boarding a Nighthawk helicopter. Blades churning, it lifted off for the thirty-minute ride to Kabul. In the distance the Hindu Kush mountains rose, their pointed white snowcaps piercing the sky.

Below us stretched brown dust and flat building compounds made of rough mud brick.

Some looked like little more than stacked earth or ruins. I had the sense that I was flying over a scene out of the Bible, gazing down upon an ancient civilization and the distant footprint it had left behind.

Though we were far removed from shifting sands, the miles of ground looked like a desert. Afghanistan had once been renowned for its grapes and pomegranates; its fruits were favorite delicacies on the British amba.s.sador's table in India. Remarkably, from my window, I could not glimpse even a blade of green. What trees had not been destroyed in the Russian invasion had been burned by the Afghans during the biting cold winters.

Now, for heat, they burned things like trash or tires, whatever they could find, whatever would catch fire.

After years of war and Taliban rule, the country was decimated. Kabul was a sh.e.l.l of bombed-out buildings. Very few people had electricity. Water was carried by hand.

Roads were collections of rubble. The country's physical infrastructure had been ruined, and the social infrastructure was worse. The most basic laws governing contracts, property rights, and business were absent in Afghanistan.

We had large scarves to cover our heads if needed, and while we flew, Anita and I pulled up our scarves as a fine, choking dust swirled through the open doors of the helicopter. The layers of dust that settled over us were far worse than the red sand that engulfed Midland. Here, there was nothing, not even scrubby mesquite, to hold the soil to the ground. The helicopter ride was like traveling in a wind tunnel, with the enormous thump-thump of the blades above us and bracing, cold air racing past. Soldiers leaned out of the doors and rear of the helicopter with their machine guns raised. These are the conditions our troops travel in every day, risking their lives. There is no special dispensation from either the elements or the insurgents; both are dangerous. The pilot who so gently set down my enormous helicopter was killed two months later in a crash in Iraq. Two of the crew chiefs were killed in a separate crash just a week later; their helicopter was brought down by bad weather in Afghanistan's Ghazni Province. I wrote

to all three families. To Captain Derek Argel's widow, I penned, "Our nation has lost a hero, but you and your son have lost your precious husband and father. My heart aches for you."