Free I Love You, Ronnie by Nancy Reagan Page A

“we” instead of “I” very naturally and easily. And you live as you never have before, despite problems, separations and conflicts. I suppose mainly you have to be willing to want to give.
    It’s not always 50–50. Sometimes one partner gives 90 percent but then sometimes the other one does, so it all evens out. It’s not always
easy, it’s something you have to work at, and I don’t think many young people realize that today. But the rewards are so great. I can’t remember what my life was like before, and I can’t imagine not being married to Ronnie.When two people really love each other they help each other stay alive and grow. There’s nothing more fulfilling than to become a complete person for the first time. I suppose it boils down to being willing to try to understand, to give of yourself, to be supportive and not to let the sun go down on an argument.
    I hope that yours will be a happy road ahead. I’m afraid I’ve rambled a bit, and of course, I can only speak for myself. However, when I married, my life took on an added meaning and depth and truly began. I’m sure yours will too.
    I knew it was very important for Ronnie, at the end of each day, to be able to put politics behind him and come home to his peaceful life with the children and me. He didn’t like to go out after work, to stop off at Frank Fat’s—the place everyone else in government went to for a drink. It had been the same way when he was in pictures—he never stayed around and had a drink with the fellows in the dressing room. He just came home. And in Sacramento, he wanted to close the door of his office and walk away. I think this helped keep him sane in the turbulent years of the sixties and early seventies, when the world seemed to go crazy. I think it also gave him a chance to think calmly, to sort out problems while he puttered around at home.
    (“Jess Plain Jess” in this letter is Jesse Unruh, a California state legislator and Ronnie’s Democratic opponent in the 1970 gubernatorial election.)
    EXECUTIVE MANSION
    SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
    March 4–70
    My Darling
    Sometimes it must seem as if the world is made up of Jess Plain Jess, Campus Slobs and Legislators—but that is only the outer layer.
    Underneath is the place where I think about you round the clock and across the calendar—I spend most of my time there. I may get mixed up about March 2 nd but never March 4—for 18 years it has been March 4 every day. Only this March 4 I’m 18 times as much in love as on that first one when I was really born.
    I’m as grateful as I am in love.
    Guv
    Even though Ronnie’s political career uprooted us to Sacramento, as it eventually would to Washington, our sense of having a solid home together never changed.We didn’t feel the rootlessness that many politicians and their families say they experience. So long as we had each other, we
were
home. That feeling of home was something very special and necessary to Ronnie and is, I think, what he refers to when he calls himself “the most married man in the world” in the next letter. Our home was his base, a source of comfort and strength. It was the same way for me.

    Ronnie’s letter on our eighteenth wedding anniversary.

    A Valentine and a doodle.
    He wrote me this letter to celebrate our nineteen years of marriage (“some say 20,” Ronnie wrote, referring to the fact that in the year before our wedding, we were together so much that we might as well have been married).
    STAT E OF CALIFORNIA
    GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
    [March 4, 1971]
    Dear Mrs. Reagan
    Your loving, faithful devotion has been observed these 19 (some say 20) years. There are no words to describe the happiness you have brought to the Gov. It is no secret that he is the most married man in the world and would be totally lost and desolate without you.
    It seemed to me you should know this and be aware of how essential you are in this man’s life. By his own admission, he is completely in love with you and happier