Lessons My Father Taught Me

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Lessons My Father Taught Me Page 10

by Michael Reagan


  There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out.

  Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back on an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music.

  If you truly love a girl, you shouldn’t ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.

  Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.

  Love, Dad

  PS: You’ll never get in trouble if you say “I love you” at least once a day.

  Notice Dad’s apologetic tone when he mentioned “an unhappy home.” I know he felt that the divorce had shortchanged Maureen and me. With this letter of advice, he was hoping to spare me some of the heartbreak he’d gone through—and he was hoping that any future children I might have would be spared that heartbreak as well.

  I wish I could say that Dad’s advice enabled my bride and me to live happily ever after, but that was not to be. Breaking up wasn’t my idea, but in the end, my first marriage—like Dad’s first marriage—ended in divorce.

  My first wife and I had been living in another state, so after the divorce, I returned to California feeling defeated, humiliated, and lonely. It truly felt like the end of everything. I called Maureen and she said that I should talk to Dad, and he would help me gain some perspective. If anyone understood what I was going through, he did.

  So I went to Pacific Palisades and sat down with Dad and Nancy in their living room. Nancy sat quietly, and Dad did most of the talking.

  “Michael,” he said, “I think I have a pretty good idea what you must be going through right now. I was raised to believe that divorce is unthinkable. So when your mother divorced me, I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of the doldrums—until Nancy came into my life. Something wonderful will happen to you one day. I know you may not believe it now, but I promise you, it will. Meanwhile, all you can do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get on with your life.”

  I was so mired in hurt and self-pity that I couldn’t believe what Dad was telling me. I couldn’t believe that real love and a great marriage were in my future. But in this, as in most things, Dad turned out to be right.

  God’s Angel of Healing in My Life

  On December 7, 1973, a boat-racing buddy and his wife invited me to dinner to meet a young lady named Colleen Sterns. She was everything Dad said I would find—and more (blind dates do work!). Her best quality was one I didn’t appreciate at the time: Colleen was a Christian.

  And what was I? I’d been raised Catholic, baptized with Mom and Maureen on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1954—but I had never internalized the faith. I was tormented by guilt over the molestation, and wounded by taunts of “bastard” from kids who knew I was adopted. (To this day, some on Twitter and Facebook call me “illegitimate” and not a true Reagan; they call Dad my “stepfather.” Cruel children never grow up.)

  God chose Colleen to be His angel of healing in my soul. She was patient with my anger and she gently confronted the sin in my life. She, too, believed that God had brought us together for a purpose. I couldn’t understand how she could be so sure, but she was right.

  In 1975, after Colleen and I had been dating for two years, Nancy began calling us, urging us to set the date. Nancy knew that Dad was preparing to run for president. He had missed my first wedding because of a prior commitment to attend the wedding of Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia. Nancy said, “You’d better get married soon if you want your father to attend.”

  So Colleen and I planned the wedding for November 7, 1975, in a chapel across from Disneyland. Most of Colleen’s family from Nebraska flew in. My sister Maureen couldn’t attend, but my mother, Jane Wyman, arrived in a limousine wearing a gold lamé gown. Dad and Nancy arrived late, and Nancy wore an elegant green outfit with a mink collar. They sat across the center aisle from Mom.

  After the ceremony, Colleen and I stood by the altar for wedding pictures. When the photographer asked for the father and mother of the groom to come up, we realized there was one detail we had forgotten to settle: Who would be in those pictures as “mother of the groom”? If Dad and Nancy were in the picture, that would upset Mom. But how would Nancy feel if Mom was in the picture?

  Mom looked around in hesitation. Nancy looked at Dad—and he stared straight ahead. I feared the worst.

  Then Mom stood up, looked straight at Nancy, and said, “Don’t worry, Nancy. Ron and I have had our picture taken together, and if you’d like to join us, please do. Now Ron, come on, the photographer’s waiting.”

  Instantly, the tension broke.

  Dad and Nancy came up and we had our picture taken. Afterward, we went to the reception. There, Dad took me aside and said, “Michael, remember that letter I sent you a few years ago about marriage? Everything I wrote in that letter still stands.”

  I still live by the advice that Dad gave me in that letter. I especially make a point of staying true to the advice Dad gave me in the PS—I tell Colleen I love her every day, and I haven’t missed a day since we’ve been married.

  A Hundred-Hundred Proposition

  Twelve days after our wedding, Dad announced he was running for president of the United States. He campaigned hard in the primary against incumbent President Gerald Ford and came up just a few delegates short.

  Four years later, Dad ran again—and this time he clinched the nomination and went on to defeat Jimmy Carter to become president. Upon entering the White House, Dad did something he had never done before: he started keeping a diary. His White House diaries were edited by historian Douglas Brinkley and published by HarperCollins in 2007. In Dad’s entry for March 4, 1981, he wrote: “Our wedding anniversary. 29 years of more happiness than any man could rightly deserve.”1

  Near the end of that month, on March 30, a mentally disturbed loner shot my father and three others outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Dad nearly died. He later wrote a detailed account of that day, including his thoughts upon coming out of the anesthesia after surgery: “I opened my eyes once to find Nancy there. I pray I’ll never face a day when she isn’t there. Of all the ways God has blessed me, giving her to me is the greatest and beyond anything I can ever hope to deserve.”2

  (I didn’t understand that magnitude of love until November 2015, when I awoke after quadruple bypass surgery and the first vision I saw was the face of my wife Colleen.)

  My father believed in old-fashioned, Bible-based morality—not because he was a prude, but because he believed that the Bible offered sensible guidelines for living a happy life. Sure, he sowed a few wild oats in his early Hollywood days—but deep inside, he was still Nelle Reagan’s son, the good Christian boy who taught Sunday school in the church basement in Dixon, Illinois. And he wan
ted his children to grow up with the same moral values he had.

  So Dad found it troubling when he learned in 1974 that my sister Patti had moved in with guitarist Bernie Leadon of the rock group The Eagles. Dad was rarely confrontational with his children, but on this occasion, he told Patti that living together with this young man was immoral, and the young man would not be welcome in their home. When Patti demanded to know what was wrong with a man and woman living together without the benefit of clergy, Dad told her, “It’s a sin in the eyes of God. It’s in the Bible.”

  What Dad didn’t know was that Patti wasn’t the only sinner in the Reagan family—and that was fine with me. As long as Patti was on the hot-seat, the heat would be off the rest of us.

  Dad believed that God’s plan for strong, healthy families is found in the Bible. And that plan is for a man and a woman to marry for life. Dad knew the suffering divorce causes. Yes, there can be redemption and a new beginning after a divorce. But there would be fewer broken lives and fewer damaged children if parents would follow the biblical prescription for a happy, healthy family.

  My sister Maureen told me that Dad once sat her down and had a long talk with her about the importance of saving herself for the right man. He wanted Maureen to have an elevated view of marriage and of her own worth as a young woman. Dad told her, “Out there, somewhere, is your future husband. Don’t waste your body on someone who isn’t your lifelong mate.” Years later, Maureen said, Dad had the same conversation with Patti.

  If you are a dad, the best thing you can do for your children is to love your wife. If you are a mom, the best thing you can do for your children is to love your husband. As Colleen has often told me, “Divorce is not an option.” We recently celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary by getting married in the Catholic Church.

  Maintaining a healthy marriage is hard work—but it’s also a joy. I enjoy spending time with Colleen. When I come home from work, I pour two glasses of wine, sit down with Colleen, and we talk. We share. We enjoy each other’s company.

  Many people enter marriage through the front door, but they keep an eye on the back door for a possible escape. They think that love is a feeling, an emotional high. Then when the emotions subside, and they discover that a big part of marriage is paying the bills, doing laundry, washing the dishes, and taking out the garbage, they ask, “Where did the love go? I don’t feel all fluttery and tingly. I guess we’re not in love anymore. Time to call it quits.”

  But the kind of love that makes marriage work isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision. True love is a decision to put your marriage partner ahead of yourself, to serve instead of being served, to give instead of taking, to swallow pride instead of insisting on rights. To build a stronger marriage, you’ll do whatever it takes—go to counseling or marriage seminars, stay up until two in the morning to talk, apologize even when you think you’re right, and more.

  Why do you sacrifice your own wants and needs in order to make the marriage work? You do it for the sake of your husband or wife. You do it for the sake of your kids. And yes, you even do it for your own sake because divorce is one of the worst things you could possibly inflict on yourself and your family.

  I’ve heard people say, “Marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition.” Wrong. Marriage is a hundred-hundred proposition. If you go into marriage thinking it’s a fifty-fifty partnership, then you’ll always be trying to draw a line down the middle—and you’ll be arguing about who’s keeping up his or her half.

  I give Colleen most of the credit for keeping our family together through the tough times in our marriage. She had the character I lacked, she had the faith I needed, and I thank God every day that I married above me.

  In a healthy marriage, both sides accept full responsibility for the entire relationship. When you are 100 percent committed to making the entire relationship work, not just to your half of the rights and your half of the responsibilities, you’ll go farther and work harder to make the relationship succeed.

  Lessons in Building a Healthy, Happy Marriage

  The letter my father wrote meant a lot to me when I first read it—but it meant even more when I was entering my second marriage. The older I was, the more I realized that Dad was not just sharing his favorite platitudes with me. He was speaking from his heart, from his own experience, and from everything he had learned over the years.

  Here are some of the lessons I learned from my father about how to make a marriage work:

  Understand the power of the past to impact the future. People sometimes question the strong role that Nancy had in my father’s life and why Dad allowed Nancy to have so much control. And I think we can find the answer to that question by looking into Dad’s past. His father, Jack Reagan, was a good man who worked hard and cared for his family. But Jack was also an alcoholic. His alcoholism weakened and undermined him as a role model for my father.

  Nelle, Dad’s mother, was a strong woman who absolutely ruled the roost. Nelle and my mother, Jane Wyman, were very good friends, and Mom used to refer to Nelle as “the first Hollywood mother.” After Nelle moved to California, she went everywhere with Dad, including his auditions and interviews. My father came from a generation where the father worked outside the home and the mother stayed home and managed the household, and that included being very involved in the lives of children.

  After my father and mother divorced, Dad was so devastated that he determined that he would keep his next marriage together, no matter what. He would never go through the agony of divorce again. So he did everything he could to make sure that his marriage to Nancy remained strong, even if that meant deferring to her in order to keep the peace.

  Nancy had her own childhood problems to deal with—and her issues were a perfect complement to Dad’s issues. Nancy’s birth father walked out the day she was born. Nancy’s mother, stage actress Edith “Edie” Luckett, placed Nancy with an aunt for several years. Edie resumed her stage career in order to support herself and Nancy. When Nancy was eight years old, Edie married Loyal Davis, a prominent neurosurgeon, who formally adopted Nancy in 1935. Though Nancy had a good relationship with her new father, she never forgot what it felt like to be abandoned by her birth father—and she was determined that no man would ever walk out on her again.

  So here were two people, Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, one determined never to have another failed marriage, the other terrified of abandonment. The two of them were so tightly fused together by the experiences of their past that even their own children felt as if they were on the outside looking in.

  I spent years being angry over the divorce and being sent away to boarding school. But as I grew older, I began to ask myself, “What was Dad’s reason for doing what he did? What was Mom’s reason for doing what she did? What was Nancy’s reason for doing what she did?” The more I came to terms with Dad’s past, Mom’s past, and Nancy’s past, the more everything seemed to fall into place. Looking at Dad’s early family, I see that Nelle ran the household, and that was the only family pattern my father knew. So he married Mom, a very strong woman much like Nelle, and she ran the household, too. Later, when Dad married Nancy, she gave up her Hollywood career and she ran the household, too.

  And you know what? I’m no different from my father. My wife Colleen is in charge of our household. I’m in charge of my career decisions, and the choices I make to support my family. I defer to her on household issues. I’m not saying that all marriages should function that way. There’s no one-size-fits-all pattern for marriage. But this pattern worked for Dad and Nancy, and it works for Colleen and me.

  Focus on winning the relationship, not the argument. Let me share with you the Michael Reagan “Rules for a Good Marriage.” There are only two rules, and both of these rules are directed at the husband:

  1. Never win an argument in her house.

  2. Never lose an argument in the privacy of your own car.

  First rule: The house you share is not your house, it’s hers. If you disagree, try this:
Give the family dog a bath, then let that soaking-wet dog run through the house. You’ll hear, “Get that dog out of my house!” Not “our house”—“my house.” So never win an argument in her home. If you win the argument, you’ll lose the relationship. Learn the art of saying, “I’m sorry,” and you’ll win the relationship.

  But don’t forget rule number two: Never lose an argument in your car. Do what I do: get in your car and yell at the right front seat.

  You’re watching football and your wife says, “Honey, would you go to the market for me?” Don’t argue, don’t complain. Just get in your car and go to the market. While you drive, rant and yell and take out your frustration on the right front seat.

  That’s what I do, and when I get back from the market, I hand the groceries to the love of my life, give her a kiss, and she’s happy. Then I sit down, watch the game, and I’m happy. (Meanwhile, in the garage, the right front seat of my car is cringing.)

  Where did I learn this marriage-saving principle? From Dad, of course.

  One Christmas, I gave Dad a McCulloch Power Mac 6 chainsaw as a Christmas present. The following year, Nancy called and asked, “Michael, you know that chainsaw you gave your father—do they make bigger ones?”

  I connected her with some people at McCulloch, and today there are two chainsaws on display at Rancho Del Cielo—the chainsaw I gave him and the bigger one Nancy gave him. Dad dearly loved Nancy—but we all have frustrations with our spouses. Between you and me, Dad often worked off his frustration with Nancy by mowing down trees with a chainsaw.

 

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