Free I Love You, Ronnie by Nancy Reagan Page B

than even a Gov. deserves.
    With Love & Appreciation
    —Your In Luv Guv.          
    Being together made both of us feel whole, which had been true for Ronnie and me right from the start. It was why our lives had merged together so very naturally at first and why, after just a matter of months, it had seemed like we’d been together for years. It was also why, by the 1970s, when we were measuring our time together in decades rather than years, it was almost impossible to believe that we’d ever had separate lives.
    (Birthdays became unbelievable for other reasons. “I don’t care what the number is,” Ronnie once wrote, diplomatically. “It only means more and more and more. I love you infinitely much.” )
    STATE OF CALIFORNIA
    GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
    [March 4, 1972]
    My Darling Wife
    This note is to warn you of a diabolical plot entered into by some of our so-called friends—(ha) calendar makers and even our own children. These and others would have you believe we’ve been married 20 years.
    20 minutes maybe—but never 20 years. In the first place it is a known fact that a human cannot sustain the high level of happiness I feel for more than a few minutes—and my happiness keeps on increasing.
    I will confess to one puzzlement but I’m sure it is just some trick perpetrated by our friends—(Ha Again!) I cant remember ever being without you and I know I was born more than 20 min’s ago.
    Oh well—that isn’t important The important thing is I don’t want to be without you for the next 20 years, or 40, or however many there are. I’ve gotten very used to being happy and I love you very much indeed.
    Your Husband of 20 something or other.

    Twentieth-anniversary letter.
    I’ve always said that my life began when I met Ronald Reagan. Ronnie often said the same thing about me. (“Thanks to you, I’m just eight years old today,” he wrote on our eighth anniversary.) In the years preceding our marriage, he said, he’d felt lost. He hadn’t been able to recognize himself as he made the nightclub circuit, dating starlets and enjoying being Hollywood’s “most eligible” bachelor. He’d felt like he was wandering in the dark.
    (He started calling me Senator, as he does in the next letter, after somebody kidded about my running for the Senate. It became a joke for everyone, and Ronnie jumped right on the bandwagon.)
    RONALD REAGAN
    My Darling Sen.
    Two thirds of my life was spent in a holding pattern awaiting the happiest landing ever made: Now it is twenty-one years later—twenty-one years so wonderful I’d do it over and over again if each flight led to you. But I still wouldn’t be able to tell you how much you mean to me.
    I just want to start each day by opening my eyes and seeing you and end each day seeing you before I close them. In between times, I’ll just look in my heart.You are always there.
    There are no secrets in politics—it’s a well-known fact that the Guv is very much that way about the Sen.
    Very much in love—
    The Guv
    Ronnie always put special thought into his holiday messages. He could write mini-sonnets into the margins of greeting cards. And he never let a holiday go by without a card—or cards.
    I’d find them waiting for me in the morning. I’d read and reread them. And, of course, I kept them all. A Thanksgiving card: “To the Woman of My Life—You Saved My Soul.” A Christmas gift card: “If this were diamonds it still wouldn’t pay the interest on the debt of love I owe you.” A birthday greeting: “Life began for me when you were born. . . You are the light of my life and I never want you to go out.” And a beautiful description of our marriage, one Mother’s Day: “It is still like an adolescent’s dream.”
    Valentine’s Day always brought a particularly lovely letter.
    Feb. 14—1960
    Darling Mommie Poo
    Feb. 14 may be the date they observe and call Valentine’s day but that is for people of only ordinary luck.
    I happen to have a “Valentine