Our presence in the White House had been celebrated by millions of Americans, but it also contributed to a reactionary sense of fear and resentment among others. The hatred was old and deep and as dangerous as ever.
There was also a nearby Container Store and a Chipotle, which made things even better. This was my place.
Barack’s head was an overpacked suitcase of information, a mainframe from which he could seemingly pull disparate bits of data at will.
Daddy, are you gonna try to be president?” she’d asked. “Don’t you think maybe you should be vice president or something first?
I had peers who were always a step or two ahead of me, whose achievements seemed effortless, but I tried not to let that get to me. I was beginning to understand that if I put in extra hours of studying, I often close the gap. I wasn’t a straight-A student, but I was always trying, and there were semesters when I got close.
What struck me was how assured he seemed of his own direction in life. He was oddly free from doubt, though at first glance it was hard to understand why.
It’s taken us time – years – to understand that this is just how each of us is built, that we are each the sum total of our respective genetic codes as well as everything installed in us by our parents and their parents before them.
While we stayed rent-free in the residence and had our utilities and staffing paid for, we nonetheless covered all other living expenses, which seemed to add up quickly, especially given the fancy-hotel quality of everything. We got an itemized bill each month for every food item and roll of toilet paper.
I think what I experienced during those years is what many did – a sense of progress, the comfort of compassion, the joy of watching the unsung and invisible find some light. A glimmer of the world as it could be. This was our bid for permanence: a rising generation that understood what was possible – and that even more was possible for them. Whatever was coming next, this was a story we could own.
The last commencement I attended that spring was personal – Malia’s graduation from Sidwell Friends, held on a warm day in June.
And heaven, as I envisioned it, had to be a place full of jazz.
But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result. And for me, it felt like that’s exactly what she was planting – a suggestion of failure long before I’d even tried to succeed. She was telling me to lower my sights, which was the absolute reverse of every last thing my parents had ever told me.
The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.
And it’s there, always, embedded in the hearts of children. Kids wake up each day believing in the goodness of things, in the magic of what might be. They’re uncynical, believers at their core.
I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey. In sharing my story, I hope to help create space for other stories and other voices, to widen the pathway for who belongs and why.
Maybe you spend the whole day considering new ways to live before finally you fit every window back into its frame and empty your bucket of Pine-Sol into the sink. And maybe now all your certainty returns, because yes, truly, it’s spring and once again you’ve made the choice to stay.
Every move she made, I realize now, was buttressed by the quiet confidence that she’d raised us to be adults. Our decisions were on us. It was our life, not hers, and always would be.
I belonged at Princeton, as much as anybody. And I came from the South Side of Chicago. It felt important to say out loud.
We were having an absurd and inappropriate argument because in the wake of death every single thing on earth feels absurd and inappropriate.
In the Midwest... winter is an exercise in waiting – for relief, for a bird to sing, for the first purple crocus to push up through the snow.