♪

host: patti davis, author ofa ly and the america we once knew. what should we know about the photo on the cover of your new book? patti: this is a photo i actually used to have a copy of when i was much younger and i don't know, it got lost over the years. i don't know who found itthis wo for the cover. and it's perfect. part of the reason it is perfect is where all looking in different directions. my parents look like ty're looking in the same direction but they're really not.

looking in the currently different directions. i think it's appropriate. host: do you remember where that was taken? patti: it was at the palisade house. i was about five and we had just moved in. it built when i was five and then my mother got pregnant with ron a year later. that was on the deck of the palisades home, i recognize the tree behind us. host: is the palisades home the general electric house? patti: this was the general electric house that has w been torn down and a large mansion built there. yes, it's a house i wrote about a lot in this book. host: you wrote that you walk back there and you saw that it was torn down. what are the memories that came back?

ighted mostly memories of being around sumi people. we spent a lot of time in the pool. -- lifetime of memories in that house. some good, some not good. i had mixed feelings watching it for torn -- be torn down. , like you said, there was a mixture of memories there. for a while, that tree behind us, my father loved that street. he used to get up on a ladder and trim the tree himself, and for a while, the people who were tearing the house down left that tree. i actually have some pictures on my phone of, the house is gone and the tree is just remaining there and then i walked by there one day and the tree was gone. it was one of the demolition people or something, i asked about it and said, we had an

arborist look at it and it was diseased or something like that. while it was startling to see that tree. i remember the picture i took was against a sort of stormy sky, that was the only thing remaining of the: why was it cae house? patti: my father was a host of general electric year at that time. he was working for general electric. and he was going out on the road sometimes well, who was supposed to be promoting their washing machines and refrigerators and all of their electrical appliance. he was, in fact, kind of holding his speech -- honing his speech. he worked for ge. i don't time where the agreement was with but part of it seems to be that they could do

commercials at our house and did quite frequently. about their appliances. so it was■g an all-electric hou. i mean, the drapes opened electrically. they had lights, very complicated lighting things, stuffed with colored lights out in the patio, you know, it was a general electric hou. people weren't doing everything electrically at that time, [laughs] so it was ge kind of had the market on that. host: what is the format of your latest book? patti: the format is it is a letter to my parents. and i have to thank my editor bob wilde for that suggestion. i was in the middle of writing a novel which i haow finished, and he called me with an idea. he said, i think this would be a really good idea for you.

a short book. a letter to your parents. i was immediately on board with that the point of this book, of looking at your family throughout wider lens, through more forgiving eyes, was a story i had been trying to tell actually through a documentary film that i kept running into roadblocks on, and i had given up on. and i thought this was the way i could tell the story and nem me. this was going to be my voice. host: you write that it was harder to write to your mother than to reagan. why? patti: we had a very challenging relationship. a very difficult relationship. and s it's always been easier for me to write about my father, even th there was some distance and there were some

issues, ito stay with him, mosty political. but my mother and i, i described in this book as sort of america and russia. i mean, we were just -- [sighs] it was just a complicated relationship. when she died and i eulogized her, i wrote about on that eulogy for a couple of weeks before she died because we knew that the time was coming, the doctor told us that she had a couple of weeks. so i started working on the eulogy then because i wanted to eulogize her by writing about the times in my life when there was just love there. when she showed up as a mother and when■! there was just love there.

and there weren't a lot of them, you know. but those were part of the story too. that was how i eulogized her. and that is actually what gave me the idea of the theme of the documentary i wanted to do, which became this book instead. that whatever your relationship is, can you find some moments where there was just love there? there, and acknowledge that that was part of your story too? host: i want to read. pago-ahead. host: this is from your book “dear mom and dad,” ,"anger was seld i held up to try to protect myself in the battle since the battle between you and me were becoming so incable. it was an inadequate shield -- you would always be ■6e victor, but it was all i had.

your anger at me was an ever present thing, even when it was hidden from view, i knew it was there. i waited for it to emerge and it was formidable. you don'let it out when dad was around, at least not that i everaw i never witnessed or overheard a fight between the two of you, and it's possible that he didn' believe he had a temper since he d a talent for not seeing what heidn't want to see. it was a destructive dance that ensnared you and me, and it happened mostly when dad went out of town for his general electric business trips. i came to realize that it didn't matter what i did or didn't do, you are going to lash out at me." patti: yeah, my mother was a formidable person. but one of the things that i have written about in this book is that, when i look at old home movies and e old photographs,

i don't see that then. there was tenderness there. there was at least what i am looking at when i look at those, there was a joy in motherhood when i was small and a toddler and as a grew, her anger started to manifest. but i think what is really important in my family is to lo a who, what your parents brought to the task of parenting. who were they before they became your parents. we tend to our parents' lives begin when they became parents. then you learn as you grow up at too. my mother was dumped at three years old by her mother with relatives she had never met before, left there for six years and on her mother returned and

said, "so, i met this doctor and we are going to get married and we are all going to move to chicago now." she was nine then. if he ever got any nurturing with the relatives, with her cousins that she lived with. my mother was an certain redacted and editing her history, but those were the facts of it. i her resentment towards me was the resentment of what she di't get when she was a little girl, that's my theory. that is how i tend to look at it now. and you know, the think about anger, that passage you read, it bothered me so much in my life. i held onto this anger, you know, for a really longi neededu

don't need that lifeline anymore. you actually can swim. you can let go of that and you will be fine, you will not drown." but along with that, i kind of had to say, you know, i'm going to be grateful for that anger. at the same time that i don't want igp anymore and i need to let go of it, i need to be grateful for the fact that it was my lifeline for a while. is a formidable person, so i think my anger was a survival tool and it helped me let goitalmost talkinr and saying, "thank you. you know what, you serve your rpyou helped me survive and i don't need you anymore pres. host: you talk about the crowded

purgatory of unanswered questions that our family has created. and half-sister for a long time, is that correct? patti: that is correct, i was i had a half-brother and half-sister. but here's the interesting thing, there are photographs of me in the previous house when i was, like, two or three years old and michael and marine were there. obviously i don't have a■ory of that, but they were there in photographs. i asked michael, did you think then -- he ieit years older than me -- "did you think that that i knew who you were?" he says i assumed that you did. but once we moved to the ge house, he was not around anymore. i was eight years old and i was told that i had an older

half-brother. that was explained to me by explaining father was married before and he had a son and a daughter from the marriage. therefore he is half your brothers. half part. i was disconcerted. i was offended i hadhe house wie more fun and i have the teenage boy to hang out with and play fun and stuff.ll be so old i was so excited. at that same time, there was a blonde woman who used to come by sometimes and talko mother and they would sit in the den and have what seemed like a very adult convsa i was never privy to. i just knew her as m aureen. so after i found ohalive with us, she was over one day and i said to her, i have a

brother, i have another brother and he is coming to live with us! and she leaned and said, don't you know who i am? i'm your sister! and isto my bedroom. because suddenly the world seemed out of control. #&you know? suddenly i was thinking, how many more are there? one is exciting. but now there is somebody else. every week, going to have anyone? [laughs] seemed like it was out of control. whatever in thewin the passage y father, i said, i know, dad, how much i like moving scenes. if this is the movie, cut to 37 years later when his biographer is writing, "dutch."

and we were having coffee, and he said, i am going to dedicate the book to christine reagan. and i said, who is that? [laughs] i was eight years old again in the hallway thinking, how many more siblings do have. christine was the child they lost after birth, who my father never got to meet because he had contracted pneumonia which he almost died from. .host: and edmund morris dedicated "dutch" to christine, tti: that is w yes. host: patti davis, you tell the story for the first time, i believe, about your grandmother edith, nancy reagan's mother. patti: so, my grandmother edith

and i -- have never told this story before, really to anyone -- for the same reasons that people don't, shame, embarrassmentp# usually, and you just don't want to go there. but she had a habit of touching me inappropriately. i was one of those girls who pe early, which i was very self-conscious about, but she would grab my breasts. sometimesvdheounot when anybodys around. so she frightened me. i tried never be alone with her, but i uccessful about that. it went on for a while. and as i said, i neveranybody a. the reason i wrote about it in this book, it was not just of the salacious or anything like that, the reason i wrote about it i that when my grandmother died, i didn't go to her funeral. and i lied, i said i was going

to be out of the country. and my mother never forgave me for it. even though i apologized to her several times, i think, over the years. her that i had lied and i really wasn't out of the country, but i did apologize. but the reason i didn't go with because this w a wom w hnappropi didn't feel like going and honoring her after her death. but what i think now is that i should've gone. if i was the person that that i am now, i would have, because they think that is how you get over things like that. he'd be the bigger person. you show up. you remember about that person what they forgot about themselves. that they are not supposed to do things like that to a child. pposed to be a responsible adult. they are supposed to be better than that. you remember that, when 's how t

that. that is the reason i wrote about, that i had a very clear reason for writing about it. host: davis rather than reagan? patti: i became davis a little before - i as like -- i am very bad at ages -- it was was 18, 16, 17, something like that. i wanted to become a writer. i was writing poetry at the time and name. my father was governor of california. i was the governor's daughter. i didn't want to be the governor's daughter, but i was. [laughs] and i just wanted my own identity. i just wanted somebody to look at me, to listen to me maybe for a few minutes without knowing who my father was at without

putting me in a box. but i didn't want my parents to get mad at me, so i thought, ybe if i use my mother's maiden name, david, there are 5 billion davises in the world. i remember sitting in my room and saying, i just let my own identity. i want to just look at me as a person for five minut b realizee governor's daughter. [laughs] since they actually understood. i think it did help that i was choosing a family name. from that point on, i used davis all the time. host: are you pretty anonymous today, can you walk down the street and not be stopped or recognized? patti: um, yeah, for the most

part. sometimes people recognize mi mean, obviously i am doing a lot of publicity for this book. now somebody will probably go, hey, i just saw you on she stared! [laughter] i live a quiet life. not like when my father was president and i had heavily mahost: what is your relationshp the days with ron, jr. and michl? patti: war't really in each other's lives. we have a civil relationship, but we are not really in each other's lives. i don't want to go into too much detail about that, but there is an important point of the to be made to for other -- to be made here for other people who have fractures in their family and we don't have relationships with people in their family. and that is foundation in your family, if you didn't grow up with it really strong foundation

your family, it's really hips wt you are building a house on sand. i think you just have to recognize that. i have talked to i ran my alzheimer's report for six years, and i have heard a lot of family stories. ountless stories about people trying to create a family relationship when there wasn'. and, you know, to think that you're going to enter someone else's life, someone else's family, because that person probably is a family by then, as a family member magical thinking, right, you might have some kind of relationship, but you are not really good to be a family becaus that was informed early on. -- that was not formed early on.

host: many words have been ur parents' love story. did you see that? did you experience that? tt yes, my parents, as i have described them, for two halves of a ccl after my mother died, mar shriver interviewed me and she said, you know, when you were younger, did you have that sense thatverybody else was outside of year-relationship? and i said to her, yeah, it's like i kneth. but if pirates came and spirited us away, they would miss us, but they would be fine. [laughter] they would always be fine themselves. and this is definitely in this book. it makes me sad now for my

■smo■th. mostly for my mother. because when my father got alzheimer's, she didn't have it natural inclination to reach■ mt a lot of times, she didn't really know how to accept that because again, the foundationalism there -- foundation was not there underneath us as a family. she didn't have fold of a family around her. we would have been there if we had had that foundation,ute did not. host: back to your book “dear , mom and dad.” , ote, "someone once said to me that they thought the rso me was because i was the flop in your romantic illusion with dad, and there might be some truth to that. the story you ve told about you and dad has the twofou being instaly, falling head over heels in love and never looking back. you have even used it is■ñike,

my world began when i met nnie. but the reality was different. from everything i've heard, dad was't entire exclusiand, as in e was not exactly anxiou to get married again. in fact, had made an agreement th jane that he wouldn't remarry before she did. but there was no merit proposal until you td marriage proposal until you told that you were pregnant. you told him interest, and according to michael, dad excused himself, used the jean and tell her mostly because you could didn't fix he could honor the agreement he made with her. i wonder if he ever knew about the call. " patti: yes. this is not breaking news that i was born seven months after my breast that for a long time. but it was an interesting thing for me to ask for in this book,

she was a very deliberate person. the only time i ever broached the subject witht was on the phone, but i can't remember what give me the courage to broach the subject. something led to it. i said to her, when you told that you were pregnant, what would you have done if he had said that i am not his. was 1952, there was no dna testing van. held have said it's not mine. and she said, i knew he wouldn't do that. this is my mother. she had a certainty that she was going to succeed in what she

wanted. and i remember another conversation earlier when she to m that when they were dating, my father said to her, you shouldn't be renting that house. you're throwing your money away, you should buy your house. she was so crestfallen because she said, i didn't want to buyee married and buy a house together. i wanted us to be a married couple. she definitely wanted that. when that person said to me that i was the flaw in her romantichere was something to that, because the proposal came because you pregnant. sai■d, honey not, you know on a canoe, and a

little black box with an engagement ring unit, you know what i mean? host: patti davis, was this book cathartic to write? patti: i think it was cathartic. i worked very hard on the challenges with my family.it haf peeling away layers. and this was sort of the last layer that -- myife was to go to a place where i could look through more sounds good to say, but getting there is hard work. kind of a pilgrim's path. book is a reflection of that. and my hope is that other people

families.his and l most families have some issues, some more than others. but welle something. so my hope is that it is helpful to other people to look at their families enter, as i step back. kind of like when you go to an art gallery, you■íclose to a pak to it so you get the full picture. host: partf letter to your ■.ñ■father, "i have often wonded if you knew, in this he of your art, that you wanted to lead this country. that your dreams were big and unless america was always a topic of conversaonven when i was wrong. as the years mounted, i came to feel that america was the presence, an entity that was sitting at the dinner table with us and getting most of the attention. eventually, i must confess, that

i developed a bad case of sibling rivalry with this country." patti: yeah. yeah. it was interesting, that feeling of sibling rivalry with america ended when my father got alzheim' it to the country and to the world. and complete strangers would come up to me tell me about their own situations. people were not -- this was 1994, people were not talking alzheimer's than thrift so people were telling a very personal things about their father, their mother, their grandparent, whatever. i felt like i had a support system in the country. people who i would never meet again and who i never met at . and i, that feeling of resenting america for father became a feef

gratitude for support that was out there and kindness even for people that had agreed with his politics and didn't like his administration. they had sympathy for what he was goin through. so it was a total turnaround. host: what was it like to be a mi when your father was in the oval office? patti: well, i didn't like being a family on display, but it occurred to me a couple of times, actually, when i was writing this bookdvantage to ite couldn't deny -- i couldn't deny any of the things that were wrong with my family because everybody could see it, even when we showed up together at inauguration or whatever. [laughs] xgit was pretty obvious that we

were not a tightly knit family. so i think ito work on everythis wrong and work on how i was looking at things changing my perceptions and my feelings. i felt this pressure of, everybody sees everything. right? so there was sort of a hidden advantage to that. but no, i definitely did not like it at the timei didn't likt daughter. host: march 30, 1981. where were you? patti: i was in my therapist wae worked out of his house, he converted his garage to his office. i was in a therapy

suddenly the door burst open and one of my secret service agent came in and instantly i was angry becau i was, like, great, i can't even be in therapy without the secret service coming in! [laughs] i look at his face and he was pale white. he said, patti, there has been a shooting. i knew italy that it was my wouldn't let me take my car. i had to leave my car in this man's driveway for a few daysunm washington. they wouldn't let me are any of us get on a commercial flight. secret service has to asmehe worst so they have to assume maybe there are other people out there trying to take out the whole family or something. so they flew me and michael and mmaureen on an air force transport plane that evening. we got to at 2:00 in

the morning or something. ron was dancing. i don't know where he came from, oklahoma or something. somebody loaned their private plane to him. anyway, that is, if. it was a really long dayi didn'n anybody else did. i was listening to the news and i didn't know if my father would live. host: what was the reunion like with your parents at the hospital? patti: ■/i thought my mother tht morning. i slept in some little room like near their bedroom and i went into her room early in the morning. she had slept with my mother's shirt that my auntand we went t. i remember when i walked into the hospital room, obviously my fa tilted the bed, so he was

at an angle. i remember looking at him and, i don't know how else to describe this, but there was like a light around him. i saw it, and i thought that he died and came back. clinically there is nothing in the records saying that, but i still believe that. and also because he told a story that, one of the notes that he wrote was, i am still here, aren't i? he was writing all of these notein"i am still here, aren't ? " he tells the story that he woke up in intensive care and there were figures in white arnd and he thought he had died. he wrote that note and asked for paper.

and i didn't think about it for a while, that a might years ago who was a doctor said, patti, the doctors in intensive care aren't dressed in white, they are dressed in scrubs. so whatever he saw, he didn't see them. so, i don't know, we will never know if that really happened, but, that is my belief. host: patti davis, were well-known during his eight years as president for disagreeing with him on issuesparticul nament. you got held in caldecott into the white house. is that prpatti: it is a previn story. there were detailed network known, but as il# wrote, my fatr did not want it to go public, which was, not at all what i wanted wanted it to be out in

the world that my father was meeting with an anti-nuclear activist. that he was to talking to her. and as i have written about, i had plans. i wanted this to be an ongoing-q dialogue between him and his administration and the entire nuclear movement. i was trying to save the world, right, and i thought it was a [laughs] and so when i got that note on my pillow in lincoln's bedroom when i got into the white house that evening, i don't want anybody to know about this, i thought, oh, no, this is not good. but i had to tell helen caldicott that. and she did go public with it, not in a favorable way. so, the fact that the meeting took place was public. ■more of an inside view of it ad

more details that i have written about it here. think -- i am not trying to brag, but i think i had a i tnk it would have been good fory father to have these open dialogue wh people on that side. i wantedo ing daniel l berg, who was very involved -- daniel ellsberg, who was very involved in the nuclear movement, to the white house. i had a whole roster of people i wanted to bring to have these conversations, and obviously that died on the vine after helenalcott's meinother issue ye about,, quote," y would probably be amused that after my public rebellion against your policies, have occasnally taken on the task of trying to explain a few of your positions, simply to shed light on how i feel herrived at some of them.

likeboion. i have peeled away the layers of rigid disagreement that always weigh us down, looking for stories underneath. when you are governor of california and in abortion pill is on your desk, you wrote a e hours used and in contemplation over a woman's intimate decision to end the pregnancy. you ended up sending a bill that for e rst time, allowed abortions for rape, incest and dangerous to the mother's physical or mental health. patti: yes, that abortion pill thaty father wrote wn he was governor, revolutionary becauser to that, in california, get an . i knew women who went on a bus to mexico and were blindfolded and taken to clinics and given abortions.

so that was quite revolutionary. his position onbo was actually the first all that i wrote for the new york times. and, you know, i wanted in that op-ed d book, to really pick apart how he came to, the soul-searching that he said he did and i believe he did, how that related to 50-year to christina reagan that we talked about before, the fact that he lost this never goo meet. that if he ever grieved over her, he never said anything about it. i suspect he kind of pushed back away from him. but i do think that that experience with christine had a lot to do with on

abortion. especially when he would hear the dialogue that comes from antiabortion people. think it hit home for him and having lost this little infant . it is interesting that i had rying to explain some of his positions, event ones that i don't agree with, but i am an unlikely person, i supse, to have done that. but i think it is part of, like i looking at things through our wider lens and looking at it with more willingness to consider what is going on with that other person. i think i thought, in years past when i have written things that weren't very favorable towards

my parents, i think i was coming you hear people say that a lot. i have to tell my truth. but the thing aboutour truth is, it's not the whole truth. other people have their truths 200 and that is part of the story also. that is certainly what i have 84 and what everybody should aim -- aimed and what everybody should aim for. there are bigger truths than you. host: this is video from your mother froml get your thoughts. [video clip] >> drugs steal away so much. they take and take. every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out. love and hope and trust and s take away the dream from every child's heart and replace

it with a nightmare. not long ago in oakland, group of children what to do if they were offered drugs and i answered, just say no. soon after tin oakland formed ay no" club. now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the cntry host: patti davis, what is your reaction? patti: well. [laughs] i don't quite know what to say here. she definitely meant well. as a former drug addict, no was not in my vocabulary. [laughs] if somebody had said to me just say"6ould have gone sorry, just say what? [laughter] it was a good effort. she meant well. i don't know how much of a difference it made, but she meant well.

host: you call yourself a former drug addict. does that mean you are sober to time yes, manyma decades. host: i want to read one quote from the book, "in the governors ar, summers were spent in sacramento i knew no one there. it was hot and dry and mild from e ocean. i'm not sure if the o you ever figured it out, but my remedy from this misery was to st sned most of the time. i brought an adequate supplyf part from assertiveness and spend long hours in the pool. . i was like a stone dustin hoffman in "eraduate, hanging out in the water. my other activity which you did not know about was to drive up to full some prison and grove shopping in the gift shop there. i am not sure exactly how this came about, but i think it had something to do with my fondness for johnny cash's9> album that e made at folsom.

" fulsome prison gift shop. [laughter] patti: here about that. i have an absolute clear memory of that gift shop. i could see walking in, windows on the right, the trustees, the prisoners who were trustees set on the left to ring up the purchases and behind them with plexiglass and prison guards watching them. and there were aisles with artwork that the prisoners had done. so i have such a clear memory of that. i have zero memory of how i ever found out that ful pthis was t'. it's not like i could have googled it. right? i don't know how■nound this out nor do i know how i figured out how to get there.

i'm not exactly a good map reader -- i certainly wasn't a good map reader then. this is a reason not to do drugs. [laughs] because you will end up with little bermuda triangles in your memory and things just drop into them. [laughs] new link host: one other issue we want to look at before we move on, we'll show video of your father from september of 1985. patti: ok. [video clip] >> would you support a massive research program against aids that the one that was recently launched against cancer. >> i have been supporting it for more than four years now. it has been one of the top priorities with us in the last four years and including what we have in the budget for 1986, it would amount to over half $1 billion that we have provided for research on aids in addition to what i am sure other medical groups are doing. have $100 million in the budget this year.

it will be $126 million next . us. yes, there is no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an host: patti davis, you write extensively in “dear mom and dad,” about this issue. patti: i have been wanting to write about aids for a long time. writing about it as an op-ed, the situation never came up where it would havebut i have be about it only because i wanted to bring ini can't excuse what . for so many years. i can't excuse it. and in some ways, i can't explain it. but there are people who still think that my father just didn't

care about gay people. , for that he was homophobic, which was not true. i mean, i grew up around gay people, there was a lesbian couple who babysat us at our house and shared holidays with. i wanted to bring in other aspects of it in terms of people in his administration who were homophobic and didn't want him to address the aids and who successfully for a while cap things from him because, you know, one of my father's flaws, and we all have flaws, is that he delegated things to other people and believed what they told him. so, i just wanted to offer some other aspects to the whole situation.

as i wrote in here, for a man whose timing was usually pretty impeccable, his timing was off ■: mean, i don't, i can't give a cleat explanation for that, and it is heartbreaking. by 1986 -- i can't remember what year rock hard and '86? host: around that, yes. patti: so, when rock hudson coum the severity of a. i mean, his friend had just died from it. that was the turning point. when he final was fully informed about the seriousness of it. responsibility to write about it. and as i have also written about

it here, years ago i the reagan library about tackling the subject. as far as i know, there is nothing at the library about aids, which is kind of like if the nixon library didn't have anything about we never been to the nixon library, but it's probably a big omission, you know? [laughs] so i wrote a long letter to somebody at the library, a long email and said look, i think if you don't talk about something, then people's misperceptions and people's harshest judgment stay intact. s t's talk about i let's do an evening. put it all out there and talk about all aspects of it. i thought it was once thing, that is interesting, we will discuss it, but i never heard

anything. host: in her latest book, her 13th, pai vis right, quote, "it is somewhat startling when we realize that our parents before, often comple good lives wh pain and lonelinessndnresolved trauma. wetart to undehe way to end fast that turbulence was injected into our own lives is to figure out the act of forgiveness that is not an easy task. it's not like there is a mineral fight. it is like learning to dance with no accompanying music. confused, search for a rhythm that will anchor us. the book “dear mom and dad,” ,in letter about family, memory and the america we once knew." thank you for joining us on q&a.

our podcast on the c-span now app.