With our movements so controlled, the number of steps Barack and I took in a day had plummeted. As a result, both of us had grown fiercely dependent on the small gym on the top floor of the residence. Barack ran on the treadmill about an hour every day, trying to beat back his physical restlessness. I was working out every morning as well, often with Cornell, who’d been our trainer in Chicago and now lived part-time in Washington on our behalf, coming over at least a few times a week to push us with plyometrics and weights.
Setting aside the business of the country, Barack and I never lacked for things to discuss. We talked that night over dinner about Malia’s flute lessons; Sasha’s ongoing devotion to her perilously frayed Blankie, which she kept draped over her head as she slept at night. When I told a funny story about how a makeup artist recently tried and failed to put false eyelashes on my mom before a photo shoot, Barack tipped his head and laughed, exactly the way I knew he would. And we had a new and entertaining baby in the house to talk about as well—a seven-month-old, completely rambunctious Portuguese water dog we’d named Bo, a gift to our family from Senator Ted Kennedy and a fulfillment of the promise we’d made to the girls during the campaign. The girls had taken to playing a hide-and-seek game with him on the South Lawn, crouching behind trees and shouting his name as he scampered across the open grass, following their voices. All of us loved Bo.
When we finally finished our meal and stood up to leave, the diners around us rose to their feet and applauded, which struck me as both kind and unnecessary. It’s possible that some of them were glad to see us go.
We were a nuisance, Barack and I, a disruption to any normal scene. There was no getting around that fact. We felt it acutely as our motorcade zipped us up Sixth Avenue and over toward Times Square, where hours earlier police had cordoned off an entire block in front of the theater, where our fellow theatergoers were now waiting in line to pass through metal detectors that normally weren’t there and the performers would need to wait an extra forty-five minutes to start the show due to the security checks.
The play, when it finally began, was marvelous—a drama by August Wilson set inside a Pittsburgh boardinghouse during the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the South and flooded into the Midwest, just as my relatives on both sides had done. Sitting in the dark next to Barack, I was riveted, a little emotional, and for a short while able to get lost in the performance and the sense of quiet contentment that came with just being off duty and out in the world.
As we flew back to Washington late that night, I already knew it would be a long time before we did anything like this again. Barack’s political opponents would criticize him for taking me to New York to see a show. The Republican Party would put out a press release before we’d even gotten home, saying that our date had been extravagant and costly to taxpayers, a message that would get picked up and debated on cable news. Barack’s team would quietly reinforce the point, urging us to be more mindful of the politics, making me feel guilty and selfish for having stolen a rare moment out and alone with my husband.
But that wasn’t even it. The critics would always be there. The Republicans would never let up. Optics would always rule our lives.
It was as if with our date Barack and I had tested a theory and proven both the best and the worst parts of what we’d suspected all along. The nice part was that we could step away for a romantic evening the way we used to, years earlier, before his political life took over. We could, as First Couple, feel close and connected, enjoying a meal and a show in a city we both loved. The harder part was seeing the selfishness inherent in making that choice, knowing that it had required hours of advance meetings between security teams and local police. It had involved extra work for our staffers, for the theater, for the waiters at the restaurant, for the people whose cars had been diverted off Sixth Avenue, for the police on the street. It was part of the new heaviness we lived with. There were just too many people involved, too many affected, for anything to feel light.
* * *
From the Truman Balcony, I could see the fullness of the garden taking shape on the southwest corner of the lawn. For me, it was a gratifying sight—a miniature Eden in progress, made up of spiraling young tendrils and half-grown shoots, carrot and onion stalks just beginning to rise, the patches of spinach dense and green, with bright red and yellow flowers blooming around the edges. We were growing food.
In late June, our original garden-helper crew from Bancroft Elementary joined me for our first harvest, kneeling together in the dirt to tear off lettuce leaves and strip pea pods from their stems. This time they were also entertained by Bo, our puppy, who proved to be a great lover of the garden himself, bounding in circles around the trees before sprawling belly-up in the sun between the raised beds.
After our harvest that day, Sam and the schoolkids made salads with their fresh-picked lettuce and peas in the kitchen, which we then ate with baked chicken, followed by cupcakes topped with garden berries. In ten weeks, the garden had generated over ninety pounds of produce—from only about $200 worth of seeds and mulch.
The garden was popular and the garden was wholesome, but I also knew that for some people it wouldn’t feel like enough. I understood that I was being watched with a certain kind of anticipation, especially by women, maybe especially by professional working women, who wondered whether I’d bury my education and management experience to fold myself into some prescribed First Lady pigeonhole, a place lined with tea leaves and pink linen. People seemed worried that I wasn’t going to show my full self.
Regardless of what I chose to do, I knew I was bound to disappoint someone. The campaign had taught me that my every move and facial expression would be read a dozen different ways. I was either hard-driving and angry or, with my garden and messages about healthy eating, I was a disappointment to feminists, lacking a certain stridency. Several months before Barack was elected, I’d told a magazine interviewer that my primary focus in the White House would be to continue my role as “mom in chief” in our family. I’d said it casually, but the phrase caught hold and was amplified across the press. Some Americans seemed to embrace it, understanding all too well the amount of organization and drive it takes to raise children. Others, meanwhile, seemed vaguely appalled, presuming it to mean that as First Lady I’d do nothing but pipe-cleaner craft projects with my kids.
The truth was, I intended to do everything—to work with purpose and parent with care—same as I always had. The only difference now was that a lot of people were watching.
My preferred way to work, at least at first, was quietly. I wanted to be methodical in putting together a larger plan, waiting until I had full confidence in what I was presenting before going public with any of it. As I told my staff, I’d rather go deep than broad when it came to taking on issues. 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. The interest and enthusiasm we’d generated with the garden—the positive news coverage, the letters pouring in from around the country—only confirmed for me that I could generate buzz around a good idea. Now I wanted to highlight a larger issue and push for larger solutions.