If I died, I didn’t want people remembering me for the stacks of legal briefs I’d written or the corporate trademarks I’d helped defend. I felt certain that I had something more to offer the world. It was time to make a move.
We didn’t wait for Dad. It was his job now to catch up with us.
In the presence of his certainty, his notion that he could make some sort of difference in the world, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit lost by comparison. His sense of purpose seemed like an unwitting challenge to my own.
As the dogs loped off to explore the perimeter of the yard, I ate my toast in the dark, feeling alone in the best possible way.
Almost from the minute we agreed it would be ok for him to run, Barack became a kind of human blur, a pixelated version of the guy I knew-.
I hadn’t believed it was possible, but maybe now I did. This was the call-and-response of democracy, I realized, a contract forged person by person. You show up for us, and we’ll show up for you. I had fifteen thousand more reasons to want Barack to win.
Three times over the course of the fall of 2011, Barack proposed bills that would create thousands of jobs for Americans, in part by giving states money to hire more teachers and first responders. Three times the Republicans blocked them, never even allowing a vote.
Barack and I developed a special fondness for Queen Elizabeth, who reminded Barack of his no-nonsense grandmother. Over the course of many visits she showed me that humanity is more important than protocol or formality.
Southside spoiled the dog the same way he spoiled me, with food and love and tolerance, all of it a silent, earnest plea never to leave him.
Life with Barack would never be dull.
These were children, asking not just why but why so often?
And in the end, I hadn’t needed to show her anything. I was only showing myself.
I will forever associate with New Yorkers – an instinctive and immediate push back against thinking small. She climbed out of the car, giving me no choice but to drive. ‘Get over it and just live a little’ was her message.
In Hawaii, Barack’s intense and brainy side receded somewhat, while the laid-back part of him flourished. He was at home. And home was where he didn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.
I also learned that being rich didn’t protect you from failure.
Failure is a feeling long before it is an action.
Her goal was to push us out into the world. “I’m not raising babies,” she’d tell us. “I’m raising adults.
Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful – a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids – and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.
The private area of the White House occupies about twenty thousand square feet on the top two stories of the main historical structure – the one you’d recognize from photos with its iconic white pillars.
I felt sometimes like a swan on a lake, knowing that my job was in part to glide and appear serene, while underwater I never stopped pedaling my legs.