Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush

Spoken from the Heart is the perfect title for Mrs. Bush's memoir. As you are reading you feel like you are sitting at her table, listening to a lifetime's worth of stories over a cup of coffee or tea.

She interweaves her roles as daughter, granddaughter, teacher, librarian, wife and mother with her more public roles as first lady of both Texas and the United States. Treating each season of her life with a quiet respect, never placing more importance on one over another. Taking each experience and showing how it prepared her to face those yet to come.

My favorite page takes place early in the book, describing her first teaching job. "The realities of an elementary school [or any school] classroom are far from the Hollywood romances of tweedy academics or wisecracking professors. The movies can condense an entire school career into a little over two hours. That doesn't take most teachers even through the morning. Teaching is, even for those who love it, at times isolating. It happens behind closed doors, one adult navigating the needs and complexities of twenty or more children, twenty or more entirely different personalities. We are not, in truth, so far removed from the days of the one-room schoolhouse. As much as teachers may talk to other faculty members, they don't go out to lunch or briefly laze by coffeepots or watercoolers. Elementary school teachers must calculate when their classrooms are subdued enough for them even to escape to the bathroom."

She introduced her students to her own love of books. The love that inspired her to become a librarian. The love that caused her to recognize the impact of authors both in Austin and Washington. The love that she took on her journeys throughout the world.

One of the things I appreciated most about her writing is the fact that while the book is about political people, it is not a political book. Mrs. Bush deals with the happenings of politics only as it impacts their family, without commentary, without judgment. She speaks of her husband as any loving wife would, she does not seek to hide his faults or to attack his detractors. She is honest about the struggles they faced and reports on them from her perspective, which is honestly all we can expect of her.

As events from the past decade or so were recounted, I couldn't help but realize how much I, personally, and we, as a nation, have let slip from our memories....The terror after 9-11 that just slowly faded away. The anthrax scares. The shoe bomber. The London explosion. The Rwanda genocide.

Mrs. Bush, to my best memory, wasn't constantly in the spotlight, seeking to be noticed and applauded for her actions, but was able to accomplish a remarkable number of very important initiatives during her eight years as First Lady.

I very much appreciated this glimpse into the lives of this family, that whether you support or abhor, had an undeniable impact on the past decade and in some ways on our future.