White House Christmas Card, 1971

In our minds, it was an act of defiance: I’d put a joint in my purse. When my sister gave me the signal, we’d each say we had to go to the bathroom where we’d meet, light up and take a few quick hits off the joint, then go back out to the party.

            It was 1971. I was a senior in high school; my sister, several years older, was a secretary and still lived at home. She hadn’t gone to college. Actually, it hadn’t been an option. My father, who himself was forced to drop out of high school to help support his family, didn’t think girls should go to college. Or at least not his girls. I always thought it would have made more sense for him to insist on a good education. He saw what an education could do. He worked as the photo bureau chief for the New York Times in Washington, DC, where he called among his personal friends some of the country’s most highly educated individuals within the nation’s government and media.

            That meant U.S. Presidents, too.

            And on the evening my sister and I hatched our little plan, it was directed at one of those presidents: Richard Nixon. And here’s the best part. We were carrying it out at the White House.

            I don’t think the event was held every year, but I do remember it was a tradition of sorts to invite the Washington press corps to the White House for a Christmas party. Sometimes, as in this year, it was a family event.

            I would love an invitation to the White House today. But at 17, it wasn’t cool. I didn’t tell my friends. It was so bourgeois, and wasn’t that part of what the whole counter-culture hippie thing was railing against? My waist-length hair, long skirts, and beads were an expression of my distaste for everything my parents stood for.

            Wasn’t that why we got high all the time? It was a statement, right?

            And then there was the Viet Nam war. I don’t think my parents held strong views either way, but my sister and I were placard-carrying anti-war demonstrators. For several years, Washington, DC, had been the site of massive demonstrations for which we participated. We shouted out the names of soldiers killed in the war as we marched past the White House, thousands strong. Take that, Richard Nixon!

            My parents didn’t seem to mind our protesting but they did worry for our safety getting to and from the rallies so my father used his press pass to get us close to the action where we’d hop out of the car, blowing kisses as we left. We’d rendezvous several hours later for our ride home after he had photographed the event for the Times.

            That we, at 17 and 20 years of age were part, however tangentially, of a culture which was against the policies of the U.S. government didn’t seem to register to my parents. So when the invitation came for the annual White House Christmas party my mother issued the order: you’re going to the White House, you’re going to look good, and you’re going to behave. It’s an honor to be invited. You should be proud. This is an opportunity of a life-time. My mother was a former Marine Sergeant. You didn’t argue.

            We went shopping at a boutique department store on Connecticut Avenue for our dresses. We didn’t have loads of money, but an evening at the White House meant a bit of a splurge on clothes.

            It’s funny how you can take a memory out and look at it, examine its parts from every angle and then when you tuck it back in it’s somehow changed. Just the act of looking at it seems in some way to alter its essence. The memory is still there but it looks slightly different. Some parts have become less clear. Other details are more vivid. Sometimes the memory rearranges itself completely.

            I remember my dress. In fact, I still have it. I can’t find my favorite sweater from last winter, but I can put my hands on a 39 years old dress in a heart-beat.

            It’s red and made of a fine-gauge corduroy. The dress has a tight fitting bodice then flairs at the waist, falling to just above my ankles. I remember thinking I looked very hip. I wore the dress every Christmas until it could no longer contain my aging body. Still, however, I can’t bring myself to let it go. I love that dress.

            I don’t remember what my sister wore, or my younger brother, but I know they were there. I don’t know where my older brother and oldest sister were. I have no idea why they didn’t come with us or if they did, why I have no memory of them.

            I know this: it was the White House. Richard Nixon was President. My sister closest to me in age and I were going and we had to do something. We weren’t the big statement kind of people; ours was a more subtle form of protest. Lighting a joint seemed innocent enough. We also thought it would be pretty cool to smoke a joint before going, too.

            Dressed and ready, my mother sitting on a stool in the kitchen having a scotch and soda while she waited for my father to change upstairs, my sister and I got high in my third-floor bedroom blowing the smoke out a dormer window cracked against the December cold.

            It’s pretty strange being stoned around your parents, even stranger when you’re stoned around police, security guards, officials of every sort, and a huge crowd of children and adults giddy with excitement and anticipation. And you’re in the White House.        

            My father was mingling. He knew everyone in the press corps, of course, but his real buddies were the White House staff. He was so outgoing, so friendly, so at ease in his own body and around everyone he came in contact with, that he seemed to glide through the rooms – Green, Blue, Red. People called out greetings. He was a celebrity among celebrities. He moved like a cartoon character with a plume of smoke at his heels sucking us into its vortex.

            Was I smiling too broadly? Were my eyes glazed? And where was my sister? I found myself wandering through the rooms alone, overwhelmed by the opulence. Actually, my parents and younger brother were nearby, sampling cookies and punch. I was sure I was being followed. Were there drug-sniffing dogs then?

I had to go the bathroom. When I came out of the stall I saw my sister across the bathroom standing by the sink. She put her thumb and forefinger together as if holding a joint and brought it to her lips.  Between us were a half-dozen women and children. She smiled. As I pushed past her I told her I didn’t want to, that it was too dangerous, and left before she could pull me back into a stall with her.

Something was happening in the hall I had stepped into. There were quiet murmurs. I overheard a few parents whispering to their children, there he is, and when I followed their gaze I saw the president among the crowd. He was making his way through the party, laughing and talking, greeting people by their first names. He seemed comfortable. And happy. We must have been standing near the band because all of a sudden Nixon was sitting at a piano playing and singing Christmas carols. Somehow, not by my own volition, I was in the group nearest him. There I was, stoned, singing with the president.

I don’t remember if I was standing by my father when the president finally made his way through the crowd to him, or if in the polite rush of people and hand-shaking I extended mine as the president passed. You’d think that would be my strongest memory. But what I remember most intensely is just standing, watching President Richard Nixon playing the piano and singing Christmas carols. In my memory I was only a few feet from him, close enough to look into his eyes, and he into mine. I remember thinking how he seemed just like a regular person, that he was just a man. In many ways he reminded me of my father.

That’s it. End of story. I don’t remember anything else about the evening. At home, my sister and I probably went directly up to my room on the third floor, spent a couple of hours watching television, and pulled out that joint in my purse. We probably laughed at how messed-up we had been and how it would have been impossible to actually carry out our plan. Still, we told ourselves, it was the thought that counts!

But there is this part of the larger story: It didn’t take me long to understand that the act of defiance my sister and I planned, including the decision to go to the White House in an altered state of mind, had more to do with youthful ignorance than political activism. It took me much longer to grasp that my sister’s interest in all things mind and mood altering was an addiction. Where, and under what circumstances she entered that state never mattered. It was true that night -- and now.

And finally there is this: As much as I hated the Viet Nam war and Watergate and came to revile Richard Nixon, I have to admit I cried when he died. I hated him, but still, I cried. In some ways I felt sorry for him, for whatever had happened in his life that created the demons he carried with him, for surely that must explain – at least in part -- who he became. Of all the images of Richard Nixon that flash through my mind, those pictures of him defiant, angry, even crazed-looking, I always come back to him at that Christmas party, sitting at a piano singing Christmas carols.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to afford my father the same redemption. When he died just months before I didn’t cry and I didn’t forgive him for whatever demons – for we all have them – that had shaped, and possibly controlled, his life as well.

Yet today as I decorate my home for the holidays I think of my father. He always loved Christmas with a child-like enthusiasm and wonder that I never completely understood. He had a special glass ball ornament that had hung on a Christmas tree in the White House. It was bigger than any of our other ornaments. I don’t know how he came to own it, but every year he hung it in the entrance to the living room. It was decorated with a red velvet ribbon, sprigs of mistletoe, and a small white dove ornament. When it fell one year and shattered my father glued it back together and hung it again until after so many years the glue could no longer bind the fragile glass.

With both parents long gone, my sisters and brothers and I have divided their lives – our lives with them – a few special pieces of furniture, my father’s photographs, memorabilia. What remains of his special White House ornament is now in my home, and today I unwrapped it, placing in on my mantel, a simple offering.

(author’s note: I can’t find any documentation for a press corps Christmas party in 1971! I found the invitation for 1972, and a reference to the 1970 party in a press briefing in early December. In 1970 and 1972, families were invited to the White House. We would have also gone to those events, too. Unfortunately, I can’t remember. It could be that all those events have merged into this one Christmas party that I remember as 1971.) 

This is the only photo I have of me with Richard Nixon. The sister in the essay is the one looking at Nixon. I’m also giving him a good stare: I’m in my mother’s arms, thumb in mouth.)