He had done it. We’d all done it. It hardly seemed possible, but the victory was sound.
Here is where I felt like our family got launched out of a cannon and into some strange underwater universe. Things felt slow and aqueous and slightly distorted, even if we were moving quickly and with precise guidance, waved by Secret Service agents into a freight elevator, hustled out a back exit at the hotel and into a waiting SUV. Did I breathe the air as we stepped outside? Did I thank the person who held open the door as we passed by? Was I smiling? I don’t know. It was as if I were still trying to frog-kick my way back to reality. Some of this, I assumed, had to be fatigue. It had been, as predicted, a very long day. I could see the grogginess in the girls’ faces. I’d prepared them for this next part of the night, explaining that whether Dad won or lost, we were going to have a big noisy celebration in a park.
We were gliding now in a police-escorted motorcade along Lake Shore Drive, speeding south toward Grant Park. I’d traveled this same road hundreds of times in my life, from my bus rides home from Whitney Young to the predawn drives to the gym. This was my city, as familiar to me as a place could be, and yet that night it felt different, transformed into something strangely quiet. It was as if we were suspended in time and space, a little like a dream.
Malia had been peering out the window of the SUV, taking it all in.
“Daddy,” she said, sounding almost apologetic. “There’s no one on the road. I don’t think anyone’s coming to your celebration.”
Barack and I looked at each other and started to laugh. It was then that we realized that ours were the only cars on the street. Barack was now president-elect. The Secret Service had cleared everything out, shutting down an entire section of Lake Shore Drive, blocking every intersection along the route—a standard precaution for a president, we’d soon learn. But for us, it was new.
Everything was new.
I put an arm around Malia. “The people are already there, sweetie,” I said. “Don’t worry, they’re waiting for us.”
And they were. More than 200,000 people had crammed into the park to see us. We could hear an expectant hum as we exited the vehicle and were ushered into a set of white tents that had been put up at the front of the park, forming a tunnel that led to the stage. A group of friends and family had gathered there to greet us, only now, due to Secret Service protocol, they were cordoned off behind a rope. Barack put his arm around me, almost as if to make sure I was still there.
We walked out onto the stage a few minutes later, the four of us, me holding Malia’s hand and Barack holding Sasha’s. I saw a lot of things at once. I saw that a wall of thick, bulletproof glass had been erected around the stage. I saw an ocean of people, many of them waving little American flags. My brain could process none of it. It all felt too big.
I remember little of Barack’s speech that night. Sasha, Malia, and I watched him from the wings as he said his words, surrounded by those glass shields and by our city and by the comfort of more than sixty-nine million votes. What stays with me is that sense of comfort, the unusual calmness of that unusually warm November night by the lake in Chicago. After so many months of going to high-energy campaign rallies with crowds deliberately whipped up into a shouting, chanting frenzy, the atmosphere in Grant Park was different. We were standing before a giant, jubilant mass of Americans who were also palpably reflective. What I heard was relative silence. It seemed almost as if I could make out every face in the crowd. There were tears in many eyes.
Maybe the calmness was something I imagined, or maybe for all of us, it was just a product of the late hour. It was almost midnight, after all. And everyone had been waiting. We’d been waiting a long, long time.
Becoming More
19
There is no handbook for incoming First Ladies of the United States. It’s not technically a job, nor is it an official government title. It comes with no salary and no spelled-out set of obligations. It’s a strange kind of sidecar to the presidency, a seat that by the time I came to it had already been occupied by more than forty-three different women, each of whom had done it in her own way.
I knew only a little about previous First Ladies and how they’d approached the position. I knew that Jackie Kennedy had dedicated herself to redecorating the White House. I recalled that Rosalynn Carter had sat in on cabinet meetings, Nancy Reagan had gotten into some trouble accepting free designer dresses, and Hillary Clinton had been derided for taking on a policy role in her husband’s administration. Once, a couple of years earlier at a luncheon for U.S. Senate spouses, I’d watched—half in shock, half in awe—as Laura Bush posed, serene and smiling, for ceremonial photos with about a hundred different people, never once losing her composure or needing a break. First Ladies showed up in the news, having tea with the spouses of foreign dignitaries; they sent out official greetings on holidays and wore pretty gowns to state dinners. I knew that they normally picked a cause or two to champion as well.
I understood already that I’d be measured by a different yardstick. As the only African American First Lady to set foot in the White House, I was “other” almost by default. If there was a presumed grace assigned to my white predecessors, I knew it wasn’t likely to be the same for me. I’d learned through the campaign stumbles that I had to be better, faster, smarter, and stronger than ever. My grace would need to be earned. I worried that many Americans wouldn’t see themselves reflected in me, or that they wouldn’t relate to my journey. I wouldn’t have the luxury of settling into my new role slowly before being judged. And when it came to judgment, I was as vulnerable as ever to the unfounded fears and racial stereotypes that lay just beneath the surface of the public consciousness, ready to be stirred up by rumor and innuendo.
I was humbled and excited to be First Lady, but not for one second did I think I’d be sliding into some glamorous, easy role. Nobody who has the words “first” and “black” attached to them ever would. I stood at the foot of the mountain, knowing I’d need to climb my way into favor.
For me, it revived an old internal call-and-response, one that tracked all the way back to high school, when I’d shown up at Whitney Young and found myself suddenly gripped by doubt. Confidence, I’d learned then, sometimes needs to be called from within. I’ve repeated the same words to myself many times now, through many climbs.
Am I good enough? Yes I am.
The seventy-six days between election and inauguration felt like a critical time to start setting the tone for the kind of First Lady I wanted to be. After all I’d done to lever myself out of corporate law and into more meaningful community-minded work, I knew I’d be happiest if I could engage actively and work toward achieving measurable results. I intended to make good on the promises I’d made to the military spouses I’d met while campaigning—to help share their stories and find ways to support them. And then there were my ideas for planting a garden and looking to improve children’s health and nutrition on a larger scale.
I didn’t want to go about any of it casually. I intended to arrive at the White House with a carefully thought-out strategy and a strong team backing me. If I’d learned anything from the ugliness of the campaign, from the myriad ways people had sought to write me off as angry or unbecoming, it was that public judgment sweeps in to fill any void. If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others. I wasn’t interested in slotting myself into a passive role, waiting for Barack’s team to give me direction. After coming through the crucible of the last year, I knew that I would never allow myself to get that banged up again.