Host patti davis, author of dear mom and dad, a letter about family, memory 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 dont know, it got lost over the years. I dont know who found it and said, this would be a good photo for the cover. And its perfect. Part othe reason it is perfect is where all lking in different direions. My parents look like theyre looking in the same direction but theyre really not. And then, of course, i am looking in the currently different directions. I think its 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 was built when i was five and then my mother got pregnant with ron and had him a year later. That was on the deck of the palisades home, i recognize the tree behind us. Host is the palisades home the geral electric house . Patti this was the geral electric house that has now been torn down and a large mansion built there. Yes, its a house i wrote about a lot in, in this book. Host you wrote that you walk back there and you saw that it was torn down. What are the memorieth came back . Patti sighted mostly memories of being around assuming people. We a l of time in the pool. There was a lot 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 behi 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 he said, we had an arborist look at it and it was diseased or Something Like that. For a 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 house. Host why was it called the ge 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 and well, who was supposed to be promoting their washing machines and refrigerators and all of their Electrical Appliance is. He was, in fact, kind of holding his speech honing his speech. He worked for ge. I dont time where the agreement was with ge, 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 an allelectric house. 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 house. People werent 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 have now 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 because 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 no one could take it away from 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 so its always been easier for me to write about my father, even though there was some distance and there were some issues, i guess, you would have to stay with him, mostly 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 it, i worked 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 werent 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 with your family is, can you find some moments where there was just love there . When there was tenderness there, and acknowledge that that was part of your story too . Host i want to read. Patti goahead. Host iss from your book dear mom a d, anger was a shield i held up try to protect myself in the battle since the battle between you and me were becoming so inescapable. It was an inadequate shield you would always be the victor, but it was all i had. Your anger at me was an ever present thing, ev when it was hidden from view, i knew it was there. Waited for it to erge and it was formidle you dont let it out when dad was around, at least not that i ever saw. I never witnessed or overheard a fight between the two of you, anits possible that he didnt believe he had a temper since he had a talent for not seeing what he didnt wt 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 didnt matter what i did or didnt 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 even old photographs, i dont 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 look at who, what your parents brought to the task of parenting. Who were they before they became your parents. We tend to as children to think that our parents lives begin when they became parents. Then you learn as you grow up that they had childhood, 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. So i dont know 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 think a lot of her resentment towards me was the resentment of what she didnt get when she was a little girl, thats 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 long time. It was my lifeline. I needed to say to myself, you dont 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, im going to be grateful for that anger. At the same time that i dont want it 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. , as i said, my mother is a formidable person, so i think my anger was a survival tool and it helped me let go of it by recognizing that. Almost talking to my own anger and saying, thank you. You know what, you serve your purpose. You helped me survive and i dont need you anymore pres. Biden . If that makes sense. Host you talk about the crowded purgatory of Unanswered Questions that our family has created. You didnt know you had a halfbrother and halfsister for a long time, is that correct . Patti that is correct, i was eight years old when i found out i had a halfbrother and halfsister. But heres 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 dont have a memory of that, but the there in photographs. I asked michael, did you think then he is eight years older than me did you think that that i knew who you were . He says i assumed that you did. But then 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 halfbrother. That was explained to me by explaining that my father was married before and he had a son and a daughter from the marriage. Therefore he is half your brothers. I didnt really acknowledge the half part. I was disconcerted. I was offended i had an older brother. I thought, the house will be more fun and i have the teenage boy to hang out with and play with and he will be so old and fun and stuff. I was so excited. At that same time, there was a blonde woman who used to come by sometimes and talk to my mother and they would sit in the den and have what seemed like a very adult conversation which i was never privy to. I just knew her as m aureen. So after i found out that michael was going to come live 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, dont you know who i am . Im your sister and i burst into tears and started crying and ran into 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 the book this was in the passage of his to my 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 just two days, she died two days after birth, who my father never got to meet because he had contracted pneumonia which he almost died from. So. Host and Edmund Morris dedicated dutch to christine, didnt . Patti that is what he said, yes. Host patti davis, you tell the story for the first time, i believe, about your grandmother edith, Nancy Reagans mother. Patti so, my grandmother edith and i have never told this story before, really to anyone for the same reasons that people dont, sme, embarrassment usually, and you just dont want to go there. But she had a habit of touching me inappropriately. I was one of those girls who developed kind of early, which i was very selfconscious about, but she would grab my breasts. Sometimes she would grab me between my legs. Not when anybody else was around. So she frightened me. I tried never be alone with her, but i wasnt always successful about that. It went on for a while. And as i said, i never told anybody about it. 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 is that when my grandmother died, i didnt 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. I didnt tell her that i had lied and i really wasnt out of the country, but i did apologize. But the reason i didnt go with because this was a woman who had been inappropriate with me and i didnt feel like going and honoring her after her death. But what i think now is that i shouldve gone. If i was the person that that i am now, i would have gone, because they think that is how you get over things like that. Hed 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. That they are supposed to be a responsible adult. They are supposed to be better than that. You remember that, when they clearly didnt. And thats how you get past that. That is the reason i wrote about, that i had a very clear reason for writing about it. Host went to become davis rather than reagan . Patti i became davis a little before i think i was like i am very bad at ages it was before i was 18, 16, 17, Something Like that. I wanted to become a writer. I was writing poetry at the time and i wanted my own name. My father was governor of california. I was the governors daughter. I didnt want to be the governors 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 didnt want my parents to get mad at me, so i thought, maybe if i use my mothers 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 minutes before they realize that i am the governors 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 me i 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 armed man following me. Host what is your relationship the daysith ron, jr. And michael . Patti we arent really in each others lives. We have a civil relationship, but we are not really in each others lives. I dont 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 dont have relationships with people in their family. And that is that if you dont have a foundation in your family, if you didnt grow up with it really Strong Foundation your family, its really hard to build relationships without that you are building a house on sand. I think you just have to recognize that. I have talked to people i ran my alzheimers report for six years, and i have heard a lot of family stories. I have heard countless stories about people trying to create a family relationship when there wasnt a strong one before. And, you know, to think that youre going to enter someone elses life, someone elses family, because that person probably is a family by then, as a family member, it kind of magical thinking, right, you might have some kind of relationship, but you are not really good to be a family because that was informed early on. That was not formed early on. Host many words have been written about your parents love story. Did you see that . Did you experience that . Patti yes, my parents, as i have dcred them, for two lv of a circle. After my mother died, Maria Shriver interviewed me and she said, you know, when you were younger, did you have that sense that sort of everybody else was outside of yearrelationship . And i said to her, yeah, its like i knew that they loved us. 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 mother. Mostly for my mother. Because when my father got alzheimers, she didnt have it Natural Inclination to reach out. I mean, i was there for her, but a lot of times, she didnt really know how to accept that because again, the foundationalism there foundation was not there underneath us as a family. She didnt have that fold of a family around her. We would have been theref had had that foundation, but we did not. Host back to your book dear , mom and dad. , quote, someone once said to me that they thought the reason you didnt like me was because i was the flop in youromantic illusion with dad, and tre might be some truth to that. The story you have told aut you and dad has the two of you being instantly, falling head over heels in love and never looking back. You have even used it is like, my world began when i met ronnie. But the reality was different. From everyinive heard, dad wasnt entirely exclusive to you and, as in new divorced man, he was not exactly anxious to get marrd again. In fact, had made an agreement with jane wyman that he wouldnt may before she did. But there was no mitroposal until you told Marriage Proposal until you told at you were pregnant. You told him interest, and cording to michael, dad excused himself, used the restaurant phone to call jean and tell her mostly because you could didnt 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 got married, people have known that for a long time. But it was an interesting thing for me to ask for in this book, that my mother was not a careless person. She was a very deliberate person. The only time i ever broached the subject with her, i cant remember, i know it was on the phone, but i cant 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. It was 1952, there was no dna testing van. He could have said its not mine. And she said, i knew he wouldnt 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 told me that when they were dating, my father said to her, you shouldnt be renting that house. Youre throwing your money away, you should buy your house. She was so crestfallen because she said, i didnt want to buy my own house, i wanted us to be 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 romantic illusion, i think there was something to that, because the proposal came because you know, she said, honey, i am pregnant. Not, you know on a canoe, and a Little