It was possible, I knew, to live on two planes at once – to have one’s feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress. It was what I had done as a kid on Euclid Avenue, what my family – and marginalized people more generally – had always done. You get somewhere by building that better reality, if at first only in your own mind. Or as Barack had put it that night, you may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.
This would be the only time in eight years that he’d request my presence in the middle of a workday, the two of us rearranging our schedules to be alone together for a moment of dim comfort. Usually, work was work and home was home, but for us, as for many people, the tragedy in Newtown shattered every window and blew down every fence. When I walked into the Oval Office, Barack and I embraced silently. There was nothing to say. No words.
I do recognize the value of individuals having their own interests, ambitions, and dreams,” I wrote in my journal. “But I don’t believe that the pursuit of one person’s dreams should come at the expense of the couple.
I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most – is it “angry” or “black” or “woman”?
I like the idea of being rigorous about friendship.
As Barack’s adviser, I was meant to act as a social conduit more than anything. My assignment was to make sure he was happy in the job, that he had someone to come to if he needed advice, and that he felt connected to the larger team.
She was also deep. It’s what I loved most about Santita. Like me, she could be frivolous and goofy when we were with a larger group, but on our own we’d get ponderous and intense, two.
It was a small but life-changing move. I didn’t stop to ask myself then what would happen to all the kids who’d been left in the basement with the teacher who couldn’t teach. Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.
There’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s a grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.
Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.
It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look.
For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others.
Having lost a fifth-grade classmate to a house fire, having watched Suzanne die before she’d had a chance to really be an adult, I’d learned that the world could be brutal and random, that hard work didn’t always assure positive outcomes.
It’s hard to put into words what sometimes you pick up in the ether, the quiet, cruel nuances of not belonging- the subtle cues that tell you to not risk anything, to find your people and just stay put.
Suzanne’s sudden death had awakened me to the idea that I wanted more joy and meaning in my life.
He was like a wind that threatened to unsettle everything.
I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on which way you want to tell it.
I’m not sure,” she said, giving me a perfunctory, patronizing smile, “that you’re Princeton material.” Her judgment was as swift as it was dismissive, probably based on a quick-glance calculus involving my grades and test scores.
He had a simple, buoying faith that if you stuck to your principles, things would work out.
It was the very thing I’d had to create room for in our shared life, to coexist with, even if reluctantly. It aggravated me sometimes no end, but it was also what I could never disavow in Barack.