Some people just roll with it. Some people like to plan everything. But the most successful people know that sometimes you need to do a bit of both, and that sometimes you don't have a choice.
The Rules for How to Have a Successful Marriage and Run a Country at the Same Time by Joshua and Donnatella Lyman…
xxxxx
Rule 1: No sex in the office.
Sub-clause 1: Kissing isn't sex.
Sub-clause 2: Air Force One is not necessarily the office, especially on long trips.
Rule 2: Keep Public Displays of Affection to a minimum.
Sub-clause 1: Except during holiday seasons
Sub-clause 2: And parties don't count
Sun-clause 3: And all the rest of the time doesn't either.
Rule 3: Date Night once a week.
Sub-clause 1: Or fortnightly.
Sub-clause 2: Or monthly, but no less.
Rule 4: If one party has to go to the other's office, they will always take coffee.
Sub-clause 1: Or donuts.
Sub-clause 2: Or "really Josh? You're making that a rule?!"
Rule 5: Holidays. We will take one eventually.
Sub-cause 1: Weekends can count as holidays.
Rule 6: Once a year, take a whole night off and go dancing
Rule 7: Flowers get sent on wedding anniversary
Sub-clause 1: Or every month, just because.
Rule 8: No children during the first term
xxxxx
Of course the rules weren't written down. No one wanted to see the headline "Lymans: No Sex in White House" on the newsstands.
Some of the rules took work and compromise. The first one was hard, but we stuck to it. The last one was easy: I was on the pill.
xxxxx
Things you should know about the Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill (COCP).
It includes a combination of an estrogen (estradiol) and a progestogen (progestin).
It works by preventing ovulation, suppressing the release of gonadotropins
It was first introduced in the United States in 1960.
It is currently used by more than 100 million women worldwide and by almost 12 million women in the United States.
Non-contraceptive uses include the treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, amenorrhea, menstrual cramps, adenomyosis, menorrhagia, menstruation-related anemia and dysmenorrhea.
Studies have found that women using birth control pills blink 32% more often than those not using the contraception.
It's 99% effective as birth control.
In some cases though, the failure rate can be as high as 20 percent because women forget to take it regularly, or they run out of pills and don't get a refill right away.
xxxxx
Josh had that look on his face as if his head was about to explode.
It was Election Day, so that was about par for the course.
I'm not sure when he'd last slept. I knew he'd been up all night talking to the President of Liberia. Terrorists had taken hostages in a hotel the day before and he was torn between the desires to help them free them and to minimise any impact this could have on our election, particularly with the African-American community.
I'd just gotten back from being on the road with the First Lady. We'd been campaigning for the President, with pit stops all over the country, the last being in New York the night before. I'd not seen Josh in a week, although we spoke on the phone in short bursts several times a day to discuss strategy, and usually had a much longer call late at night to discuss everything else. Last night we hadn't spoken because the hours of calls to Liberia.
I didn't know exactly where his head was right now, as I watched him stare up at the screens in the bullpen of the West Wing, but I knew that expression on his face.
He hadn't seen me yet, so I scribbled a note and handed it to Carol. I watched as she took it over to him. He took it absently but then froze and his eyes widened as he read it.
"She's back?!" I heard him ask, excitedly.
Carol smiled and gestured over at me, standing in the corridor beyond the glass.
I smiled at him as he grinned back at me. He nearly fell over a desk as he scrambled in my direction. As he reached me he tried for nonchalance, leaning on the dividing wall.
"Hey." He said.
"Hey." I replied.
He held up the note.
"You wanted to go for a walk?" He asked softly.
"Or something." I replied softly too, smiling.
"Where?" He asked. It came out a little strangled.
I turned and started walking. He followed, coming up close behind me and putting a hand on my back.
"Donna, where are we going?" He asked, close by my ear.
I said nothing, just kept walking. We reached the door to the basement offices.
"Oh." He said and pushed the door open for me to go through it.
His hands were on me as soon as the door closed again. His fingers tangled in my hair as he pulled my face to his for a blistering kiss.
"Oh God, I've missed you." He breathed between kisses.
"Josh, we're still too public." I told him breathlessly as he kissed my neck.
"Yeah." He sighed deeply, breaking off the kisses and resting his forehead against mine for a long moment as we just breathed each other in.
He took my hand and led me down to one of the empty offices. Then he locked the door behind us and turned to me.
The office was unused at the moment. Just a filing cabinet and an empty desk.
"So we're breaking rule 1?" He asked, leaning back on the door casually but looking at me hungrily.
I sat on the desk, dangling my legs.
"Guess so." I replied, looking up at him from under my lashes.
"We did so well." He said with feigned regret as he pushed himself away from the door and started towards me.
"We did." I replied sincerely. "Now shut up and kiss me."
xxxxx
37 minutes later he was back in the bullpen rallying the troops with a smile on his face.
Fast, I know; sometimes it's not about the speed but the motion.
xxxxx
My office phone rang at 3:21.
"Donna, can you come over here?" His voice sounded rough.
"Josh, what's wrong?"
"They killed the hostages."
xxxxx
Margaret let me straight in. Her expression was concerned, but I smiled at her to reassure her.
When I got in there he was pacing.
"Josh." I said softly to announce my presence.
"Donna!" He exclaimed as he crossed to me and pulled me into his arms.
"Josh." I sighed, upset to see him upset.
"I tried, Donna." His voice into my neck was filled with anguish. "I tried to stop it but they killed them all."
I stroked his back and his hair.
"I know you tried, I know you did." I tried to soothe him. "You can't always save them all."
"13 children, Donna. A school group on a trip." He held me tighter. "They gunned them down."
"Oh god." I sighed and held on tighter too.
xxxxx
The thing about our line of work is that you have to juggle a lot of emotions. One minute you're up, then you're on to the next thing and suddenly you're down. But then you have to get back up again.
The polls were still open. The news channels were filled with the sad news from Liberia.
You get a moment to mourn the things that go wrong, but then you have to move on.
We had to control the news cycle as best we could. We had to decide who to send out there and what they needed to say. This is what we did on the worst days.
xxxxx
We won.
The election that is.
We asked ourselves if we would ever win one without having a loss alongside it.
We didn't stay long at the party. We went home.
In our own bed, we made love and fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms.
xxxxx
It was weeks later when I started to feel unwell.
I'd been on the pill so long that I didn't really get periods anymore, so I didn't miss one. I never stopped my pill, so I never dreamed I could be pregnant. Thing was that during the campaign, I wasn't that consistent about when I was taking it. The days were long and the schedules were full. Some mornings I forgot, and then took it whenever I remembered.
I went to the doctor two days before Inauguration Day, because that was the first day I could fit it into my schedule.
He was so busy in those two days that I couldn't find a moment to tell him. There just wasn't a quiet moment to share.
So when the poem was being read, it just seemed like a good moment.
"Josh," I whispered.
"Ya," He whispered back, not looking at me.
"We broke rule 8." I whispered.
His head snapped to look at me. First he looked questioning. Then incredulous. Then he grinned. We sat there grinning at each other like a couple of idiots.
He took my hand and it held tightly, and we watched our President get sworn back in.
They're not all bad days.