Q&A With Elizabeth Edwards: I've Never Been Good at Leisure
On Wade as a daily presence in her life.
I wish it were my analogy because it's so great: You lose a child, and people think there's a point at which you're going to get over it—you won't think about it as much. There was a time when I couldn't think of anything else. There was no room in my head for anything else. That's no longer the case. But if I'd lost my leg instead of my child, people would never say, "Are you over it?" But you learn to walk with one leg, and we have learned to walk without Wade. If you lost your leg, you'd never forget you lost it, every moment you'd know that was the case, and the same thing is true with us. He's got a part in both of our days, every day. The younger children—he's part of their lives, too. They can take a picture of 15 kids and pick Wade out at any age. We discuss him, honestly, in the same way we discuss Cate, who's off at school, because he is their big brother. Emma Claire used to not remember that she didn't know him, never met him. She said on Wednesday that she was real sorry she didn't get to meet him. She's now a little older and recognizing that she didn't know him. She wants things that were his. She holds on to the fact that he's her brother. I try to make certain that that's not an oppressive part of her life, but a positive part of her life.
On dealing with criticism of her husband, including his $400 haircut and a widely viewed YouTube video showing him fussing with his hair before a television appearance.
At first you can look at this stuff and think it's kind of funny. All of us have caught ourselves standing in front of a mirror too long. John was sort of stuck in the chair, obviously, in the YouYube thing. They hadn't started filming so you just keep fooling with yourself because you've just got nothing else to do. You can laugh about mistakes you've made. But at some point you've got to almost get angry and say, "We've got men and women dying in Iraq. We've got all of these struggles." At some point we start thinking about them and stop thinking about this nonsense. It's great that this process starts in states like Iowa, where people pay a lot of attention to the specifics. They're less likely to be swayed by something like YouTube. This is a very informed electorate. These are people who pay attention. And that's good for us.
On what she would do if everyone on every campaign got to take a day off.
I think that it would be easy to say that it would involve real leisure, sitting and reading. I'm not very good at leisure. I've never been good at leisure. A young man has been helping us build paths on our property through the woods down to the creek. If I had a day and everything had to stop, I would rent a mulcher and get the kids to go out, and we would get the fallen trees that are on parts of that path, and we would mulch and put them on that path. And maybe plant some things. I've got some funny face things, some noses and eyes that you put on trees. I bought them for each of the children. So we'd go out in the woods, find a tree, and put them on. If I get to do the day and not John, John's grilling out. And if Cate's home, maybe she's cleaning up.
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