ThirdAge: Was it hard for you having your children grow up, marry, and move away?
Cokie: They both got married the same summer. I felt such a sense that summer of "job well done." You know, the biggest job you're ever assigned in your life is to raise children. And to watch each of them walk down those aisles with those lovely human beings, and feel like, "All right, they're grown, we've done it, we've done this job." That sense of just incredible fulfillment is unbelievable.
Steve: Some people asked me around the time that my daughter got married, "Don't you feel like you're losing your daughter?" I always thought that was a totally bizarre question. If you value marriage and if you've been blessed with a good one yourself, that's what you want for your children. You're not losing them, you're launching them.
Cokie: Also, they're not lost to us, they're very much in touch. [Laughs]
TA: So you don't have any mourning, like some parents do when their kids fly away. ...
Cokie: What we're doing is rejoicing in the lives they're having.
Steve: We do remember and understand that stage in life. The day we were assigned to California [Steve was assigned by The New York Times to be West Coast bureau chief], our son was two days old. I had to call up my parents and basically say, "The good news is you have a healthy grandson. The bad news is, I'm taking him three thousand miles away." And so we understand, for all the joys of family, for all the strengths that community provides to a young marriage, there's also a great virtue in separation in the early years of marriage, where you can grow and get to know each other and form your own union, without Mom and Dad looking over your shoulder.
So not only did we understand when they moved away--one lives here in San Francisco and one lives in London--we encouraged it, knowing, having lived through that stage of life, and having seen the virtues, and also knowing the pain that would entail for us, knowing that we would be separated.
TA: Did you actually voice that with each other?
Cokie: To ourselves, oh sure.
Steve: And to them too, to some extent. I mean, I said very explicitly to both of them, "You're doing the right thing."
TA: Are you pestering your children, Lee and Rebecca, for grandchildren yet?
Cokie: Certainly not, certainly not. [Laughing.] But they certainly know how we feel about it.
TA: And how do you feel about it?
Cokie: We're dying for them. [Laughs].
Steve: We try to be respectful of their own priorities, their own choices. They do know how we feel. I think they are very grateful that we have seven great nieces and nephews in our lives, and several who live very close to us in Washington...
Cokie: So they divert us. [Laughs]. Next: It Takes a Village >
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ThirdAge: Was it hard for you having your children grow up, marry, and move away?
