His late mother, Virginia, deserves much of the credit. She worked hard as a nurse anesthetist, held strong opinions, and had an unmatched zest for life. As a result, Bill is completely unbothered by having an ambitious, opinionated, occasionally pushy wife. In fact, he loves me for it.
Long before I thought of running for public office, he was saying, “You should do it. You’d be great at it. I’d love to vote for you.” He helped me believe in this bigger version of myself.
Bill was a devoted son-in-law and always made my parents feel welcome in our home. Toward the end of my mother’s life, when I wanted her to move into our house in Washington, he said yes without hesitation. Though I expected nothing less, this meant the world to me.
I know so many women who are married to men who—though they have their good qualities—can be sullen, moody, irritated at small requests, and generally disappointed with everyone and everything. Bill Clinton is the opposite. He has a temper, but he’s never mean. And he’s funny, friendly, unflappable in the face of mishaps and inconveniences, and easily delighted by the world—remember those balloons at the convention? He is fabulous company.
We’ve certainly had dark days in our marriage. You know all about them—and please consider for a moment what it would be like for the whole world to know about the worst moments in your relationship. There were times that I was deeply unsure about whether our marriage could or should survive. But on those days, I asked myself the questions that mattered most to me: Do I still love him? And can I still be in this marriage without becoming unrecognizable to myself—twisted by anger, resentment, or remoteness? The answers were always yes. So I kept going.
On our first date, we went to the Yale University Art Gallery to see a Mark Rothko exhibit. The building was closed, but Bill talked our way in. We had the building entirely to ourselves. When I think about that afternoon—seeing the art, hearing the stillness all around us, giddy about this person whom I had just met but somehow knew would change my life—it still feels magical, and I feel happy and lucky all over again.
I still think he’s one of the most handsome men I’ve ever known.
I’m proud of him: proud of his vast intellect, his big heart, the contributions he has made to the world.
I love him with my whole heart.
That’s more than enough to build a life on.
I looked up at the blue sky, feeling, in fact, a burst of energy, but mostly feeling my mother’s presence, remembering why it was that I’d thought I could hike this trail.
I’ve met a lot of strong people in my life but no one stronger than my mother.
People say that about their mothers all the time. But consider the life of Dorothy Howell.
Starting when she was three or four, her parents would leave her alone all day in their fifth-floor walk-up in Chicago. When she got hungry, she had to bundle herself up, walk down all those stairs, go to a nearby restaurant, produce a meal voucher, eat, and then walk all the way home. Alone.
At age eight, she was put on a train headed to California. Her parents were getting divorced, so they sent her and her three-year-old sister to live with their paternal grandparents. The little girls made the journey by themselves—no adults. It took four days.
Her grandmother wore long black Victorian dresses. Her grandfather hardly said a word. Their rules were incredibly strict. When my mother dared to go trick-or-treating one Halloween, the punishment was confinement to her bedroom for a full year, coming out only to go to school.
By the time she was fourteen, my mother couldn’t take it anymore. She found a job as a housekeeper for a local family. She looked after the children in exchange for a place to live. She had one blouse and skirt that she washed every night. But the family was kind to her—finally, a little kindness. They encouraged her to keep going to high school.
When Mom graduated from high school, she moved back to Chicago because her mother sent her a letter suggesting that maybe they could be a family again. Despite everything, she missed her mom and wanted badly to be reunited. But when she got there, her mother made it clear that what she really wanted was a housekeeper. Something broke in my mom’s heart forever. Still, she was a good daughter, and we dutifully visited my grandmother a few times a year.
Mom moved into a small apartment, found an office job, and met my dad, Hugh Rodham. They married in 1942 and after World War II had me, followed by my two brothers. We lived in a house in the suburbs. Mom, a homemaker, was a blur of constant energy, cooking, cleaning, hanging laundry, doing dishes, helping us with our homework, and sewing clothes for me. When I was in high school, she made me a dress—white with a print of red roses—that I thought was the prettiest I’d ever seen. She loved us intensely and worked hard to make our childhoods meaningful and fun. We played lots of games, read lots of books, went on lots of meandering walks, and talked about everything under the sun.
Back in the day, kids and their parents didn’t consider each other friends. That’s not how it worked. They were the parents. We were the kids.
But when I look back, there was no question that she was my best friend.
Even as a little girl, I saw how strong she was. She was so competent. When Mom said something, you knew that she meant it. When she told me to stand up for myself with a neighborhood bully, I did. She was so determined that some of her determination rubbed off on me.
She was not a huge personality. She didn’t pound her fists on the table or yell like my dad did—that’s not how she made her presence known. But she knew what she believed. She lived her values. She would do anything for us, and we would do anything for her. All of that made her powerful.
When I got older, the full extent of her loveless, lonely childhood hit me. I wondered if I could have survived such an ordeal with my spirit and dignity intact. She knew that she was worthy of love and decent treatment, even though the world told her otherwise for a long time. How did she hold on to that self-respect in the face of all that disregard? The most important people in her life told her she was nothing. How did she know that wasn’t true? I marveled at the mental strength it must have taken to keep believing that a better day was coming, that she would find her place, that hard work would see her through, that her life had meaning despite how unfair fate had been to her.
When I became a mother myself and discovered how much patience and resilience it requires, I saw my mother’s strength in a new way. She was raised with such neglect, to the extent that she was raised at all. How did she learn how to give my brothers and me such a loving and secure childhood? We talked about this. She said she carefully observed every family she ever met, including that family she worked for as a fourteen-year-old all those years ago. She paid attention to how the parents spoke to each other and to their kids. She saw that gentle firmness was possible and that families could actually laugh together, and not just sit in stony silence. Mostly, she figured it out on her own. It wasn’t hard for her, she said. She loved us and was so happy to be around us, it was easy to show it.
But I know other people whose parents had cruel childhoods and who internalized that cruelty and dished it out to their own kids later. That’s how abuse gets passed on through the generations. That’s probably what happened with my grandmother, in fact. My mom single-handedly stopped that cycle dead in its tracks.