T

10

hat summer, I started keeping a journal. I bought myself a clothbound black
book with purple flowers on the cover and kept it next to my bed. I took it with
me when I went on business trips for Sidley & Austin. I was not a daily writer, or
even a weekly writer: I picked up a pen only when I had the time and energy to
sort through my jumbled feelings. I’d write a few entries in a single week and
then lay the journal down for a month or sometimes more. I was not, by nature,
especially introspective. The whole exercise of recording one’s thoughts was new
to me—a habit I’d picked up in part, I suppose, from Barack, who viewed
writing as therapeutic and clarifying and had kept journals on and off over the
years.

He’d come back to Chicago over his summer break from Harvard, this time
skipping the sublet and moving directly into my apartment on Euclid Avenue.
This meant not only that we were learning, in a real way, how to cohabit as a
couple but also that Barack got to know my family in a more intimate way. He’d
talk sports with my dad as he headed out for a shift at the water plant. He
sometimes helped my mother carry her groceries in from the garage. It was a
good feeling. Craig had already assessed Barack’s character in the most thorough
and revealing way he could—by including him in a high-octane weekend
basketball game with a bunch of his buddies, most of them former college players.
He’d done this, actually, at my request. Craig’s opinion of Barack mattered to
me, and my brother knew how to read people, especially in the context of a
game. Barack had passed the test. He was smooth on the floor, my brother said,
and knew when to make the right pass, but he also wasn’t afraid to shoot when
he was open. “He’s no ball hog,” Craig said. “But he’s got guts.”