From This Day Forward

by Cokie Roberts

  CR: I had been in Texas and you were in Ohio or someplace. I got on your plane in St. Louis going to Sioux Falls. I knew you were going to be on that flight, but you didn’t know that I was getting on it, too. You had all your work spread out on the tray table and I said, “Excuse me, could I please get in there?” You were so irritated to be interrupted! Then you looked up and said, “It’s you!”

  At the end of the 1980 campaign we wrote a big Sunday New York Times magazine article together, pooling the anecdotes and observations we had collected during the fall. When the galleys came back for the final edit, the piece needed substantial cutting. Steve had the galleys physically in his possession at home in Washington. I was on the West Coast in a hotel room and he would read me a section and say, “Well, this could go.” And I would scream, “No, it can’t, it’s my section! I wrote that!” This was before faxes and e-mails, so just because he had possession of the actual piece of paper, he had too much say over the cutting of that piece.

  SR: But it was an example of the evolution of our lives. This was a double byline. We had contributed equally, it was a totally joint effort. A lot of the things we had written earlier had not been. Cokie had done the research and I had done the writing. But now we were both full-time professionals, covering the same assignments, and the piece ran on the cover of the magazine the Sunday before the 1980 elections.

  We enjoyed working on the same stories but we talked shop an awful lot. The kids would complain about it and say, “We’ve heard enough about politics for tonight, thank you very much!” Fortunately, we weren’t direct competitors. Cokie was working for radio and I was working for print, so she was always going to get on the air first.

  CR: I could be the world’s most generous colleague, I had the earliest deadline in town. That was before twenty-four-hour channels and constant news on the Internet.

  SR: We helped each other an enormous amount. Covering the Hill, you could never be all the places you needed to be at one time, so we constantly traded information.

  CR: An added bonus to covering Congress was my mother. It was lovely to be able to just drop in and see her during the day.

  SR: I’m sure I was the only reporter covering the Hill who lived in constant fear of being kissed by his mother-in-law. There I’d be, trying to act like a grown-up, interviewing somebody important, and she’d swoop down and nail me. But it was great to have family around, after so long away from home. Being with good friends for rituals and holidays and birthdays was always very important to us, and one of the things we missed most during our travels was the connection to our actual families and to very old friends. Now we were able to rebuild those connections.

  CR: During our years away we missed being around our brothers’ and sisters’ kids, and it was a treat to become full-time uncles and aunts, really for the first time. We have a big family Christmas, with turkey and goose and all the fixings, and it was wonderful to be back celebrating it with everyone I truly cared about. Now that my job was settled and interesting, and the kids were happy, I realized Steven had been right to come home.

  SR: And my parents in New Jersey weren’t too far away. We always spent the long Thanksgiving weekend at their house with all of my siblings. One year we rented a van and organized a big family field trip to Philadelphia. It was the first time I realized I was now a member of the sandwich generation. My father and my nephew Zak, the oldest and youngest members of our group, got lost at the same time, and of course, those of us in the middle had to find them.

  The family connections grew even tighter when my younger brother moved to Washington. When he had been living in San Francisco during our days in L.A., he had been a wonderful uncle to our children, and after a stint in Boston he’d decided to look for a job in Washington. He stayed with us for a while, which was great fun for all of us, especially the kids, and after he found work on Capitol Hill and a place to live, Cokie and her lady friends declared him prime marriage material. He was a single, funny, bright guy who had never been married and very much wanted to be. Men that sane are in short supply in Washington, so Cokie decided that he was not going to go to a stranger. She had a younger friend at NPR who also happened to be from New Orleans—a perfect fit! We had a big party at home for recently married friends and we invited the two of them. It was in the garden, a pretty spring night. I came through the buffet line last and the only open seat was next to the person we had picked out for my brother. He was sitting at another table and I thought, “What’s wrong with him, hasn’t he figured out he’s supposed to meet this beautiful woman?” I sat down. She and I had a nice chat, and then I got up to help serve dessert. When I came back to the table, my brother was sitting in my chair. It happens that this table was only a few feet from the spot where we’d been married, in the same corner of the yard where our chuppah had been. They soon started dating and just over a year later got married on the exact same spot. It’s practically sacred ground. Since then, there have been two more marriages right there—friends of ours who Cokie introduced and our daughter, Becca. And that doesn’t begin to count all the parties related to weddings, from engagements to anniversaries to receptions, we’ve celebrated in that garden. More than a dozen in all. My brother always loved the idea that we’d all gotten married under the same old apple tree, and after the tree eventually died, the friends who had used that same spot for their wedding gave us a new one. It’s growing nicely, almost ready for the next couple.

  EQUAL WORK

  In many ways, this was the married life we had always planned, back during that first spring in Boston when the possibility seemed so remote. Steve had his dream job, covering Congress for The New York Times, and Cokie had her dream house, the one she had grown up in. Our daughter slept in Cokie’s girlhood room and Steve farmed her father’s garden. As our circle of friends and relatives continued to expand, every passing year required new and creative ways to fit everybody in for Christmas and Passover, birthdays and book parties. What we didn’t anticipate back in Boston—or in New York or Los Angeles or Athens for that matter—was that our jobs would be equal. In fact, that they would be the same. And that sameness had its drawbacks. If you’re sitting up in bed at eleven o’clock discussing the intricacies of the federal budget, you’re doing something wrong. But the pluses far outweighed the minuses. We walked in each other’s shoes every day, faced the same problems, covered the same stories. One member of Congress even complained one day about “stereophonic Robertses” as we fired questions at him from different sides of the room. And there was one phrase neither one of us could ever say to the other, a phrase that has gnawed and nibbled away at the foundation of many good marriages—“you just don’t understand, dear.”

  SR: This new equality in our work situations required me to take more responsibility at home, particularly when Cokie started hosting her show on public television, The Lawmakers. It was broadcast live, on Thursday nights. And it happened that the wife of the other New York Times reporter, covering the Hill, Martin Tolchin, taught at George Washington on Thursday nights. Marty and I had kids exactly the same ages and both of us were on duty the same time. I used to say, only half in jest, that you could pass by the New York Times booth on Capitol Hill and overhear the high-powered correspondents saying into the phone, “Now, dear, set the oven at three hundred and fifty degrees…”

  CR: Which of course happens with women correspondents constantly.

  SR: That’s true. We had one friend, a female reporter with two little boys at home, who was so tired all the time that she actually fell asleep one day in the front row of the press gallery, her arms draped over the balcony. The kids and I worked out a routine that we all looked forward to. Lee was already interested in the law, and a show called The Paper Chase, set at Harvard Law School, was on just after Cokie’s show. So we’d have supper, and then watch our two favorite programs.

  CR: Then I would get home and we’d watch Hill Street Blues. It’s the only time we’ve ever organized a family nig
ht around television. But I took on that job without any idea of how much work it would be. I had the family, NPR, and then The Lawmakers, and the schools didn’t help much. Even in a neighborhood like ours, I was surprised how few mothers worked and how the schools were completely geared to at-home moms. I think it’s still true. The schools don’t take responsibility for the fact that the world has changed. At the first hint of a snowflake, they close at one o’clock in the afternoon and send children home to empty houses and there’s no way for parents to know unless they’ve listened to the radio all day in the office. And how was a mother on a factory line supposed to get the information? For the few serious snowstorms we have in the Washington area, the schools could come up with a better system of communication. I had long conversations with the principal and teachers and tried to be infinitely reasonable, but I never felt the people on the other end were equally reasonable. The teachers would always try to schedule conferences at one o’clock in the afternoon. I’d say, “Could we possibly have it at eight o’clock in the morning?” Well, no.

  SR: I think that’s changing, now that so many mothers are working.

  CR: Maybe, but I doubt it’s changed enough. When summertime rolled around and the kids went to day camp, I’d have to try to figure out how to get them home in the afternoons. At the beginning of a session I’d get up all my nerve to ask the other mothers for help. I’m so bad at this, I can’t even ask a good friend for a ride home, but I’d plead with these other mothers, “I’ll drive your children every single solitary morning for the rest of their lives if you, you, you, you, and you will drive my children home in the afternoons.” Living in the suburbs and working downtown, dealing with the logistics of getting children from school to camp to piano lessons to theater lessons is worthy of the most well-staged military campaigns. The ideal, of course, is having enough money to hire a nanny who drives, but we didn’t have that. In fact, we gave our baby-sitter driving lessons and her first day out she wrecked a car.

  SR: At one point you actually hired a cab.

  CR: I hired a cab to take Rebecca and another little girl whose mother worked to piano lessons. We had the same driver every week. That worked out quite well. But with all the stress of balancing work and family, one incident made me feel better. I went to Becca’s school one day to talk to the kids about the coming election. I tried to bring a few things along to make it more interesting, so I had my tape recorder with me and my press credentials, and I happened to be wearing a navy-blue suit. Halloween came soon after that visit, and I wanted to see this fabulous parade where the whole elementary school marched around the neighborhood in their costumes. I was at the Capitol and I went tearing out to Bethesda to see the parade in the middle of the day. Flabbergasted, Becca demanded, “What are you doing here? I don’t care about you coming to see the parade.” And I said, “Well, I care.” It was her last one, her last year in that school. Then, as I looked at the parade, there were all these sixth-grade girls in blue suits with tape recorders! They were dressing up as reporters!

  SR: Our own kids were less enthusiastic about journalism. They were used to my writing about them but they never really liked it. At one point, not long after we moved back from Greece, there was an oil crisis and the New York Times travel section assigned me to write about taking a family trip without using a car. Good idea. So we took a train to Philadelphia and went to all the historical sites. We were walking along and Becca, who was probably about seven or eight, said something cute. I pulled out my notebook to write it down when she turned on me and pronounced, “That’s off-the-record, Dad!” I take some satisfaction in the fact that she is now a reporter herself!

  But, as for so many people, family life was a constant juggling act. People often ask us, “How did you do it?” And the answer is pretty simple. Our first priority was always trying to be with the kids. We didn’t make every important event but we made most of them—at least after I missed Lee’s first birthday—because that’s what we wanted to do. Sometimes it was quite a feat. One night I was at the Capitol and Lee was singing in a concert at junior high school; I was eager to go but the Congress was staying late.

  CR: The members have that habit.

  SR: The newspaper’s rule was that if you were covering the Congress, you had to stay as late as the session lasted, no matter what. And this was one of the few times I broke that rule. I filed my story for the first edition, got in the car, drove thirty minutes to the school, heard the concert, and raced back to the Capitol, praying all the time, “Please, God, let nothing have happened.”

  CR: Which is a pretty safe bet.

  SR: I got away with it. My desk never knew. I didn’t do it very often. It was just so important that we try to make those events, and that one was memorable. The kids were singing songs from Fiddler on the Roof, and one of the soloists turned up sick, and at the last minute Lee took over all of his parts. That happened once. If I’d missed it, no second chances.

  Lee traded singing for debating when he went to high school, but Becca loved performing, and one year she had the lead in the production of Bye Bye Birdie. The second act starts with the character that Becca was playing somewhat undressed. The character’s just broken up with her boyfriend and she sings this torch song about how I’m a free woman now as she’s getting dressed to go out on the town.

  CR: This is a big high-school auditorium.

  SR: With a thousand kids. The curtain went up and there stood my darling daughter in her underwear singing this torch song!

  CR: It was modest underwear!

  SR: All of these teenage boys were hooting and hollering and there sat poor Dad in the audience. I was within seconds of leaping to my feet and screaming, “I know what you’re thinking!” The dangers of having children who perform in public.

  CR: We also learned something else that proved useful—it wasn’t necessary, contrary to popular belief, to participate in Washington social life. There’s a theory that in order to get the story and make the contacts, a reporter has to be out every night, but it’s not true. Now, we were fortunate because we both worked for national news organizations members of Congress cared about, so they would usually return our calls. But we learned we didn’t have to abandon the family to get the story.

  SR: I’ve always remembered a story Scotty Reston used to tell, about his early days in town, after the war, when he and Sally were going out practically every night to a different embassy reception or dinner party. One night one of his three boys was watching him get dressed and complaining that he wasn’t going to be home. And Scotty had a conversion. He told himself, this doesn’t make sense. And that was a story I never forgot.

  CR: We also thought it mattered to be involved in the kids’ education, and we had a serious problem—the county was trying to close down our little neighborhood elementary school. I was on the committee to keep the school open, which involved a great deal of work and time spent together as a committee. That produced one of those funny Washington situations outsiders don’t ever understand. One of the other committee parents was a staff member on the Hill who later went to work for the White House, which made him a great source for stories I was covering. Nobody could ever understand where I was getting my information and no one would’ve ever been able to track it. He would take my calls because of the time we spent together and the friendship we formed working to keep the school open. Much more effective than trying to schmooze someone at a crowded cocktail party!

  SR: There’s a lot about Washington that has nothing at all to do with politics. It’s a town like any other, with all of the usual activities. One of my favorites was basketball, which I played with a group of guys on Sunday mornings. Several of our kids decided to join a basketball league, but they needed a coach and I agreed to help. But most of the kids were terrible and so were the coaches. The team included a number of foreign kids, and basketball was not their first sport. This little kid from Bolivia was about three feet tall. A demon soccer player but he didn’t kn
ow the first thing about basketball.

  CR: At one point our kids marched off the court chanting, “We’re number ten! We’re number ten!” And it was only a nine-team league.

  SR: The kids appreciated the time I would spend separately with each of them, and sports was a great way to do that. When we first came back to Washington, Lee figured he could pass as a native if he fanatically rooted for the Redskins, along with all the other crazed football fans. He dressed himself in every piece of Redskins paraphernalia available—sweatshirt, hat, socks. And the vicissitudes of another couple’s marriage gave us the chance to go to some games, which was almost impossible because season tickets had sold out in the 1960s. This couple, good friends of ours, had bought season tickets when they were available, then later moved to New York. They kept their Redskins tickets and bought New York Giants tickets as well. Their divorce settlement gave the wife custody of the Washington tickets and the guy the New York tickets. Every year, as a great act of generosity, our friend would give me at least two sets of tickets as birthday presents for the kids. I’d take each kid separately to a game. We loved having a whole afternoon just to ourselves, though they always joked that it was embarrassing to go with me because I would cheer so loudly. At certain ages, as all families know, kids are not exactly proud of their parents. In fact, in this period, I got one of the best birthday cards ever from Becca. It had this sweet, simpering front that read, “Dear Daddy, on your special day, I want to tell you three little words that I don’t tell you often enough.” Then inside in bold letters: “Don’t embarrass me!”