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Transcript from "Family"

Q: You also take great joy in your family these days, it is quite apparent from the photographs around your house.  Do you have grandchildren?

TJ: There is nothing that brings me more laughter than the two little girls that are our granddaughters, now ages eight and nine.  They are totally loaded with mischief, but they are also loaded with a lot of interesting thoughts.  I am talking with the eight year old, and I said, “Julene, I plan to live at least until you are 20.  I want to see you go through grammar school and high school.  I am planning to buy your first car.”  I told that to her sister.  “You know, who knows?  By 20, you might have met the right guy!” Our daughter, who is sort of standing outside of the room, looks back at me and says, "Grandy, you won't!"  I said, "What do you mean I won't?"  She said, "Because you will be dead."  I said, "Gosh!" and then she looked back at me and said, "But, Grandy, I will really miss you!"  I just had tears in...the things that these little girls say or do, but they are just always into mischief.  Among the great regrets of my life, is that I did not take the time with young Wyatt Johnson and young Krista Johnson that I have taken with Bren and Julene and again, among my life's lessons is not to give the time and attention and love to your children.  You, to some extent, were a part of this generation of ours that was go out the door early in the morning, you come home sometime late at night, you are so focused on your life trying to make it that you don't realize that the most important work that you do is not in the White House, but in your own house.  I don't have many regrets but that, boy, is a big one.  At about eight or nine, our daughter, Krista, who was a wonderful soccer player.  I had missed, I don't know, six or seven consecutive soccer games of hers...I remember she came off the field, they had won and I made it just in time to see the game end.  She put her little hand on her side like this (hand on his hip), no more than eight or nine.  She looked back at me and said, "Don't forget that you're a daddy, too."  So, I say to people who are the ages--and I really do say to this new era of parenting--it is so much better.  I think the fathers now are putting more emphasis on their role as parents than we did.  None of us has ever tried to portray ourselves as perfect, but that was a giant imperfection.