She's Melting

Or, Peggy Gets Her Freak On

It starts out no stranger than normal:

June 9, 2004, approximately 5 p.m., U.S. Capitol:

What I was thinking was: Everyone here brought their souls. We are all these physical repositories of ourselves, of our characters and personalities and ambitions. But everybody is a soul, has a soul, and all these people gathered for the funeral of the great man of their lives, and they brought their souls.

I tell you this because it somehow has to do with what followed.

...

Then the politicians would leave, and the friends and colleagues of Ronald Reagan would depart the Mansfield Room to enter the Rotunda and say goodbye to the old man we loved, and loved in a way, some of us, that we didn't even understand until we saw the coffin.

...

Richard Nixon, even when portrayed compassionately, is shown bathed in sweat and resentment. But he had a class--a patriotism--that has not been appreciated and understood.

And then she really loses it:

My eyes met my son's and I gave him the chin up-deadeye look that parents give children to say: I'm coming.

...

I said to my son, "Hold my hand and don't let go, we can't get separated." About halfway down the steps I suddenly wanted to share some thoughts on history. I slowed a little. I was very angry to be driven from our Capitol by terror scum. My son was too, and said of them words boys don't normally say in front of their mothers....

We wound up in a group--Oatsie and Nick, Robert and Blaine Trump. We met up after a few blocks and surveyed the options. If the plane was going to hit and the plane was carrying bad stuff, nukes or chems or bios, we'd want to be in a big solid place. Union Station, three blocks away. Run for it. Inside is coolness and marble and communications and TVs in a nice cool bar. We all thought: They might bomb the station. I thought: If they're gonna take out the Capitol with nukes, they won't bother with the station today.

We got to the station, got Oatsie and Nick up the right ramps, got into some tall cool bar. We were dripping with sweat, which soaked through OUR shirts. I forgot to tell you it was 92 degrees at 3 p.m. We were heaving from running and catching our breath. The bar had kids and commuters talking on phones and flirting and drinking, they had no idea what had happened we asked that they put their big Jumbotron TV on. When Oatsie was rolled, in she was asked by a waiter what she would like. She said, "I would like a cool, dry chardonnay." I said that sounded just about right. My son wanted a Japanese beer. He had earned it.

We settled in. I asked Oatsie Charles who was the first president she'd ever seen with her eyes. She said, "Franklin D. Roosevelt." She told us of him, and of her friend JFK. "He had natural charisma--just natural charm."

We listened to her stories of history as the drums beat for Ronald Reagan on the jumbo TV. And at that moment on a Sony Jumbotron in a little table in a railroad station bar, we watched the body of Ronald Reagan arrive at Andrews and be met by a car. There were other people there in the bar and they were young office workers, commuters talking on cell phones and flirting and laughing. I got up and went to the bar, I introduced myself and told them we'd been evacuated and now we were watching our friend who we'd loved come home to us from California and I asked if they'd like to join us. I asked if they'd like to join us. They were so wonderful--kind and sweet, and they nodded and lowered their voices. And a few came and turned their seats to join our small group and watch our friend come home.

It's hard to say which would help more -- an editor or a electroshock therapy.