You can do this. We’ll figure it out.
And so I gave my approval to his first run for office, larding it with a bit of wifely caution. “I think you’ll be frustrated,” I warned. “If you end up getting elected, you’re gonna go down there and nothing will get accomplished, no matter how hard you try. It’ll drive you crazy.”
“Maybe,” Barack said, with a bemused shrug. “But maybe I can do some good. Who knows?”
“That’s right,” I said, shrugging back. It wasn’t my job to interfere with his optimism. “Who knows?”
* * *
This won’t be news to anyone, but my husband did become a politician. He was a good person who wanted to have an impact in the world, and despite my skepticism he decided this was the best way to go about it. Such is the nature of his faith.
Barack was elected to the Illinois senate in November 1996 and sworn in two months later, at the start of the following year. To my surprise, I’d enjoyed watching the campaign unfold. I’d helped collect signatures to put him on the ballot, knocking on doors in my old neighborhood on Saturdays, listening to what residents had to say about the state and its government, all the things they thought needed fixing. For me, it was reminiscent of the weekends I’d spent as a child trailing my dad as he climbed up all those porch steps, going about his duties as a precinct captain. Beyond this, I wasn’t much needed, and that suited me perfectly. I could treat campaigning like a hobby, picking it up when it was convenient, having some fun with it, and then getting back to my own work.
Barack’s mother had passed away in Honolulu shortly after he announced his candidacy. Her decline had been so swift that he hadn’t made it there to say good-bye. This crushed him. It was Ann Dunham who’d introduced him to the richness of literature and the power of a well-reasoned argument. Without her, he wouldn’t have felt the monsoon downpours in Jakarta or seen the water temples of Bali. He might never have learned to appreciate how easy and thrilling it was to jump from one continent to another, or how to embrace the unfamiliar. She was an explorer, an intrepid follower of her own heart. I saw her spirit in Barack in big and small ways. The pain of losing her sat lodged like a blade in both of us, right alongside the blade that had been embedded when we’d lost my dad.
Now that it was winter and the legislature was in session, we were separated for a good part of every week. Barack drove four hours to Springfield on Monday nights and checked into a cheap hotel where a lot of the other legislators stayed, usually returning late on Thursday. He had a small office in the statehouse and a part-time staffer in Chicago. He’d scaled back his work at the law firm but as a way of keeping pace with our debts, he’d added more courses to his teaching load at the law school, scheduling classes for days he wasn’t in Springfield and teaching more when the senate wasn’t in session. We spoke on the phone every night he was downstate, comparing notes and swapping tales about our respective days. On Fridays, back in Chicago, we had a standing date night, usually meeting downtown at a restaurant called Zinfandel after we’d both finished up work.
I remember these nights with a deep fondness now, for the low, warm lights of the restaurant and how it had become predictable that with my devotion to punctuality I’d always be the first to show up. I’d wait for Barack, and because it was the end of the workweek, and because I was accustomed to it at this point, it didn’t bother me that he was late. I knew he’d get there eventually and that my heart would leap as it always did, seeing him walk through the door and hand his winter coat off to the hostess before threading his way through the tables, grinning when his eyes finally landed on mine. He’d kiss me and then take off his suit jacket, draping it on the back of his chair before sitting down. My husband. The routine settled me. We ordered the same thing pretty much every Friday—pot roast, Brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes—and when it came, we ate every bite.
This