Family Fun in the White House

A place to swim in your clothes and hear the ghost

Reality has been pressing in on Jimmy Carter on all sides, as the half-year assessments of his presidency have duly noted: trouble with foreign policy, ups and downs with Congress, blacks and liberals, continuing suspicion from the business community. But in the White House family quarters, all continues serene. In fact, the Carters are so relentlessly just-plain-folks that outsiders usually ask, "Are they for real?" The answer is yes, to the extent that reality can exist in the White House, with its 70 or so servants and other household staff, its almost weekly state dinners, its constant reminders of vast power. TIME Washington Correspondent Bonnie Angela spent some time with the First Lady, and provides this latest situation report from the home front.

In the Truman Balcony, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter sit, hands touching, side by side in their sturdy Georgia-made rocking chairs, like generations of Southern couples on countless porches of a summer evening. The twilight air is heavy, but the Carters, relaxing in blue jeans and sports clothes after the day's work, seem not to notice. "I like this balcony," muses the President, looking beyond the green sweep of the South Lawn and the Softball game in progress on the Ellipse to the great monuments to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. "I often come out here at 6:30 in the morning, and on Sunday mornings we read the pa pers out here. It is beautiful. After sup per, after a banquet, I'll bring foreign leaders up here -- Sadat, Schmidt . . ."

Rosalynn interrupts with a chuckle: "One night I was tired and half asleep when I heard some comings and goings. Amy came into the bedroom, and I asked her who it was. She said, 'It's the King.' It was King Hussein--Jimmy had taken him to see Amy in her room. She was propped up in bed reading a book." But one White House visitor, former Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin, when asked by the President whether he would like to drop in on Amy, displayed foolhardy courage. "No thanks," he said, thereby not improving the atmosphere of an already chilly meeting.

In the tradition of little girls, Amy loves mysteries, and the White House comes equipped with a secret stairway --you push a special panel in the wall --and its own ghost. In quest of the Lincoln ghost, Amy and Classmate Claudia Sanchez, daughter of a Chilean embassy cook, spent a night in the huge Lincoln bed, while Mary Fitzpatrick, the reprieved prisoner who is Amy's nurse, slept on a pallet on the floor. And, grins Rosalynn, "of course they heard the ghost."

On hot nights, Amy sometimes retreats to her tree house, a platform five feet up among the leaves and boasting a hammock. Just to remind everyone that politics can never be totally absent, the President also saw to it that an invitation to the tree house was extended to the daughter of a Republican Congressman who had supported his opposition to natural-gas deregulation.

The White House has intimidated many occupants in the past, but not the Carters of Plains. Declares Rosalynn: "This is home." She adds: "What made it easy was that we were all together again." "All" is the eight of them--the senior Carters, Amy, Jeff and Wife Annette, Chip and Wife Caron and five-month-old James Earl Carter IV--the most extended family to dwell in the Executive mansion since the expansive days of the Franklin Roosevelts. On a recent Saturday night, the President and First Lady volunteered to baby-sit. "Jimmy pushed the baby around the South Lawn," Rosalynn says, "and while we played tennis the baby was in his carriage beside the court."

This week she accompanies the President on a short excursion to Plains, which she misses. But in the White House these days, she is having more fun than she has had in years. "I'm playing tennis," she beams. "I've never played before, so I'm just learning. But I really enjoy it. It's a time to be with Jimmy." After tennis one blistering day ("You get so hot you're wet all over"), Rosalynn cast off inhibition and jumped into the swimming pool, tennis dress and all. "It felt so good we've done it several times." But a lifetime of putting work above pleasure nudges her into a rationale for tennis: "I really need the exercise. And when you live where you work, it's easy to work all the time. You have to avoid that."

Rosalynn's activities in her mental-health program and a dozen other projects led to a unique arrangement: a formally scheduled luncheon with the President once a week. "Every time Jimmy walked in, I had a question for him. I always tried to look for a good time to do it --but every time it was not a good time. So he said, 'Why don't you do like Fritz does? He and I have lunch every Monday, and he brings in all the questions he wants to discuss.'" So every Wednesday the First Lady has a business lunch, squeezed in among Cabinet officers and visiting dignitaries on the official schedule. Rosalynn goes well prepared to those lunches a deux on the secluded patio out side his West Wing study. "I've got a whole file of things I take to talk about with him." For example, she told him much about her diplomatic foray through Latin America as the President's representative, which a lot of people thought was not a proper role for a First Lady.

Some might think that what makes living in the White House the good life is the Jacuzzi or the private movie theater. But what she really enjoys, Rosalynn insists, is the close family things. Relatives in the third-floor guest rooms. Holding hands around the dinner table as the President calls on someone to ask the blessing. Leisurely Saturday lunches at poolside with all the children. "You are kind of isolated from other people here," Rosalynn explains. "It draws the family closer. You're all in this situation together."

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