Laura Bush - an intimate portrait of the 1st lady

"Laura respects Barbara, and Barbara respects her because Laura does not try to please her," Anne Stewart said. "Laura's not going to be athletic. That's a big deal with Barbara.  Laura just wasn't going to get into a mold as such.  Barbara can be pretty tough.  Laura has so much reserve and self-confidence.  With everything she has been through, she has a real sense of her own self and she is not going to compromise it for anything.  She is not going to play tennis if somebody else wants her to play tennis.  She is going to play golf if she wants to play golf[...]
The elder Bush will say, 'Ok Anne, you go and play tennis.  Clay go to the horseshoe game.  Somebody else go to the boat.'" Anne said, "Laura is nowhere to be seen.  It turns out she is in the house, reading.  She doesn't feel the need to compete with anybody."(83)

This is funny, because all I want to do on vacations is read, but I don't have the guts. This is the part of the book that will stick with me (before it got partisan and political).  I envy Laura, not because of the brave vacation reading, but because she doesn't seem to suffer one jot from people-pleasing.   I do not have Laura Bush's personality, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it (ok, probably I am, that's the whole problem), but I do hope to grow in my "real sense of my own self" and to accept what I find.