Barbara Bush, Two Bands, and a Four-Year-Old Holding Her Hand

On 17 July 1989 Barbara Bush came to Wassenaar, outside The Hague, to open the new building of the American School of The Hague. She was received, according to the Leidse Courant, in the Dutch manner: a carnival band from Zoeterwoude on one side, a brass band from Wassenaar on the other, and carnival princes and princesses dancing in between, in July.

One band is a welcome, and two bands are an incident.

There were six hundred guests, mostly Americans living in the town, dressed for a First Lady. The paper recorded, with a Dutch gift for understatement, that the carnival band fell on slightly less fertile ground. The schoolchildren did not look delighted. Mrs Bush looked surprised, which is what a face does when a tuba starts without warning.

Then the speeches. The headteacher, who knew his audience, remarked with a wink that a donation from such an important American couple would not go amiss. The mayor of Wassenaar presented a crystal glass and called the town the home port of Americans in Holland. Mrs Bush spoke about American schools abroad, gave the school a copy of her book and unveiled a stone.

And there was a four-year-old.

At some point a small boy attached himself to the First Lady and held her hand. He held it through the ceremony. She patted him on the head, which the paper recorded as his reward. In half an hour of carefully arranged welcome, the guest who got closest to the guest of honour was the one nobody had arranged.

I have been the parent of that guest. At an embassy reception in Copenhagen, the youngest, then three, slipped away from me during the speeches. I found her by following a line of people trying not to smile. She was standing next to the ambassador, holding his trouser leg, and explaining, at length, that she had a wobbly tooth.

She did not have a wobbly tooth. She had seen another child get attention for one at nursery.

The ambassador listened with great courtesy. He asked to see the tooth. She showed him a perfectly firm tooth. He said it was very wobbly indeed. She has regarded him as a close friend ever since.

Mrs Bush left for Amsterdam after half an hour. The bands packed up. Six hundred guests went home. The four-year-old had held the most important hand in the room, which is a skill, and which no amount of brass band can teach.

The youngest still sends the ambassador a card every Christmas. He has retired. He still replies, asking after the tooth.