Although I spent many of my formative years living in the White House, I always knew it wasn’t my house. It was my home, absolutely, but not my house. The White House belongs to the American people, and that’s why we call it the People’s House. I never forgot that.
So yes, while I played hide-and-seek in the White House residence and danced outside the closed doors of many a state dinner, I never once thought, “this is my house” in the way my friends thought of theirs.
I was 12 years old the first time I walked through the doors of the White House as a soon-to-be resident, not a visitor. First lady Barbara Bush gave my mom and me a tour, sharing where her grandchildren would stay when they came to visit and what their families’ favorite foods were.
Eight years later, my family would welcome the Bush family back, and I remember telling Jenna and Barbara Bush about my favorite places, the friends I had made who worked at the White House and, yes, my favorite foods.
I always had the sense that the Bush family, like mine, understood that we are all merely passing through, even while our parents were shaping American history. It was the same sensibility I had when meeting Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon as well as first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson, and others who had, for a time, called the White House home.
