whether I made partner or not. Having been through law school myself, I also
knew how busy Barack would be. He’d been chosen as an editor on the Harvard
Law Review, a monthly student-run journal that was considered one of the top
legal publications in the country. It was an honor to be picked for the editorial
team, but it was also like tacking a full-time job onto the already-heavy load of
being a law student.
What did this leave us with? It left us with the phone. Keep in mind that
this was 1989, when phones didn’t live in our pockets. Texting wasn’t a thing; no
emoji could sub for a kiss. The phone required both time and mutual availability.
Personal calls happened usually at home, at night, when you were dog tired and
in need of sleep.
Barack told me, ahead of leaving, that he preferred letter writing.
“I’m not much of a phone guy” was how he put it. As if that settled it.
But it settled nothing. We’d just spent the whole summer talking. I wasn’t
going to relegate our love to the creeping pace of the postal service. This was
another small difference between us: Barack could pour his heart out through a
pen. He’d been raised on letters, sustenance arriving in the form of wispy airmail
envelopes from his mom in Indonesia. I, meanwhile, was an in-your-face sort of
person—brought up on Sunday dinners at Southside’s, where you sometimes had
to shout to be heard.
In my family, we gabbed. My dad, who’d recently traded in his car for a
specialized van to accommodate his disability, still made a point of showing up in
his cousins’ doorways as often as possible for in-person visits. Friends, neighbors,
and cousins of cousins also regularly turned up on Euclid Avenue and planted
themselves in the living room next to my father in his recliner to tell stories and
ask for advice. Even David, my old high school boyfriend, sometimes dropped in
to seek his counsel. My dad had no problem with the phone, either. For years,
I’d seen him call my grandmother in South Carolina almost daily, asking for her
news.
I informed Barack that if our relationship was going to work, he’d better get
comfortable with the phone. “If I’m not talking to you,” I announced, “I might
have to find another guy who’ll listen.” I was joking, but only a little.
And so it was that Barack became a phone guy. Over the course of that fall,
we spoke as often as we could manage, both of us locked into our respective
worlds and schedules but still sharing the little details of our days, commiserating
over the heap of corporate tax cases he had to read, or laughing about how I’d