Sharing Good Times by Jimmy Carter

Author:Jimmy Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

FAMILY VACATIONS

WITH OUR FOUR CHILDREN, their spouses, and eleven grandchildren, ranging in age from five to twenty-nine, and with some of them married or with long-standing and apparently permanent partners, Rosalynn and I have had to acknowledge and respect the varied interests, obligations, and idiosyncrasies of more than two dozen people, most of whom share common genes.

In addition to our immediate kinfolks, Mary Prince is an integral member of our family. She was a young prisoner assigned to the governor’s mansion when we moved there in January 1971, being punished for a crime she had not committed. Our daughter was three years old at the time, and Mary’s intelligence and dedication convinced us to let her help Rosalynn care for Amy while I was governor. Designated a trusty under my care as her probation officer, she also lived with us in the White House. During this time her trial was investigated by the original sentencing judge, and it was proven that she had been framed.

It has been a difficult but enjoyable challenge for us to devise ways to share at least a portion of our lives with the other members of our immediate family. For as many years as possible our older children came home to be with us on holidays and at other special times, but once married, they had dual obligations to visit in-laws. One binding force among us is Mary Prince, who is always willing to travel to any other home when one of our children has a special need or crisis. Another tie is that we own the farmlands jointly, and we invite the children to come to Plains whenever it’s convenient to ride and walk with us in the fields and woodlands, to be reminded of boundary lines and our family’s history of ownership.

But as our family became more widely scattered and diverse in age, it was obvious that the older and younger ones did not know each other well and had no way to report on their year’s experiences or discuss business and financial issues in which we have a common interest.

Rosalynn and I had a welcome vacation just a week after we left the White House. We were in low spirits, and I was physically exhausted after the busy lame duck congressional sessions and having stayed awake for almost three days negotiating the final release of our hostages who had been held in Iran. After I made a quick trip to Wiesbaden, Germany, to welcome all of them back to freedom and safety, we left immediately for ten days in the national park on the island of St. John, in the Virgin Islands. We swam, fished, hiked, slept, read, went sailing in large boats, and learned to windsurf. I’ll always remember when Rosalynn was finally able to stay erect but didn’t know how to change course and was afraid of sharks if she jumped off the surfboard far from shore. We eventually found a motorboat and caught her before she disappeared into the open sea.

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