on the table for this discussion. Here is me, I was saying, and here also is my baby.
It seemed a miracle that my would-be boss appeared to get it. If he had any reservations listening to me explain how flextime was a necessity while I bounced Sasha on my lap, hoping all the while that her diaper wouldn’t leak, he didn’t express them. I walked out of the interview feeling pleased and fairly certain I’d be offered the job. But no matter how it panned out, I knew I’d at least done something good for myself in speaking up about my needs. There was power, I felt, in just saying it out loud. With a clear mind and a baby who was starting to fuss, I rushed us both back home.
* * *
This was the new math in our family: We had two kids, three jobs, two cars, one condo, and what felt like no free time. I accepted the new position at the hospital; Barack continued teaching and legislating. We both served on the boards of several nonprofits, and as much as he’d been stung by his defeat in the congressional primary, Barack still had ideas about trying for a higher office. George W. Bush was now president. As a country, we’d endured the shock and tragedy of the terror attacks of 9/11. There was a war going on in Afghanistan, a new color-coded threat advisory system being used in the United States, and Osama bin Laden was apparently hiding somewhere in a cave. As always, Barack was absorbing every bit of news carefully, going about his regular business while quietly developing his own thoughts about it all.
I don’t recall exactly when it was that he first raised the possibility of running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The idea was still nascent and an actual decision many months away, but clearly it was taking hold in Barack’s mind. What I do remember is my response, which was just to look at him incredulously, as if to say, Don’t you think we’re busy enough?
My distaste for politics was only intensifying, less because of what went on in either Springfield or D.C. and more because five years into his tenure as state senator Barack’s overloaded schedule was starting to really grate on me. As Sasha and Malia grew, I found that the pace only quickened and the to-do lists only got longer, leaving me operating in what felt like a never-ending state of overdrive. Barack and I did all we could to keep the girls’ lives calm and manageable. We had a new babysitter helping out at home. Malia was happy at her University of Chicago Laboratory School, making friends and loading up her own little calendar with birthday parties and swim classes on weekends. Sasha was now about a year old, wobbling on two feet and beginning to say words and crack us up with her megawatt smiles. She was madly inquisitive and utterly bent on keeping up with Malia and her four-year-old buddies. My hospital job was going well, though the best way to stay on top of it, I was discovering, was to hoist myself from bed at 5:00 a.m. and put in a couple of hours on the computer before anyone else woke up.
This left me a little ragged in the evenings and sometimes put me in direct conflict with my night-owl husband, who turned up on Thursday nights from Springfield relatively chipper and wanting to dive headfirst into family life, making up for all the time he’d lost. But time was now officially an issue for us. If Barack’s disregard for punctuality had once been something I’d gently teased him about, it was now a straight-up aggravation. I knew that Thursdays made him happy. I’d hear his excitement when he called to report that he was done with work and finally headed home. I understood it was nothing but good intentions that would lead him to say “I’m on my way!” or “Almost home!” And for a while, I believed those words. I’d give the girls their nightly bath but delay bedtime so that they could wait up to give their dad a hug. Or I’d feed them dinner and put them to bed but hold off on eating myself, lighting a few candles and looking forward to sharing a meal with Barack.
And then I’d wait. I’d wait so long that Sasha’s and Malia’s eyelids would