First Kids deliver change to the White House
Lori Borgman | Monday, January 19, 2009
All children leave trails behind them when they
inhabit a house -- scuff marks on the baseboards, handprints on
the walls, pen caps and paper clips down the heating vent. It is
a Hansel and Gretel trail of mementos, memories and cookie crumbs
that say, “I was here, I lived, I grew.” It happens in every house,
even the White House.
The Bush twins didn’t leave much of a trail as
they were college students when their father took office. Too bad.
They would have livened up the place.
Chelsea Clinton seemed the girl who always sat
at the front of the class, knew the answers and could help the teacher
with words that were hard to pronounce. She wouldn’t have left much
behind other than an SAT study guide.
Amy Carter was memorialized in a photograph sitting
in a window of the White House reading a book. Worst case scenario,
she left a couple of library due-date cards behind.
President Kennedy’s young children frequently
blazed a trail through the Oval Office to pay their father a visit.
Caroline had a pony named Macaroni that roamed the White House gardens
leaving a trail of another sort.
There may have been a few six-shooters left behind
during the Eisenhower administration. Dwight and Mamie’s grandson
David celebrated his eighth birthday in the White House with a Roy
Rogers theme party – attended by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
Tad and Willie Lincoln left their mark by rigging
a system of call bells throughout the White House to all ring at
once, prompting mayhem and confusion. They would not do well in
today’s zero-tolerance everything.
By far, the White House took its worst drubbing
from those starched, frocked children of Teddy Roosevelt. His brood
of six slid down the stairs on kitchen trays, staged pillow fights,
demanded wrestling matches with their father before bedtime, and
brought their pony upstairs on an elevator to cheer a sick sibling.
The Roosevelts were the wild things down the block that other kids
had a good time with but made all the parents nervous.
Archie and Quentin Roosevelt once crept behind
the lamp lighter as he worked his way down Pennsylvania Avenue and
over to Lafayette, extinguishing street lamps after he lit them.
The boys were nabbed by a watchman who had witnessed the mischief.
Recognizing the rascals, he let them escape -- either because he
feared their father or feared them.
It is highly unlikely the Obama girls, Malia and
Sasha, will be pulling pranks after dark on Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is also unlikely that the momma bear will allow the girls in
the public eye much. Nor should she.
Still, I hope they get before the cameras now
and then. The President may make appointments and negotiate foreign
policy, but he and his family do something else as well. By virtue
of being the First Family, they popularize and normalize certain
behaviors. They create a picture in the nation’s eye.
In a day when families are imploding, not only
in the black community, but in the white community and the brown
community, it’s a sorely needed picture – father, mother, children,
committed and united, plodding through the day-to-day, offering
a snapshot of what love looks like and how family works.
A family that lives well is a fine trail to follow
through any house at any time.
