loved him. I felt loved by him. We’d made it almost two years as a long-distance
couple, and now, finally, we could be a short-distance couple. It meant that we
once again had weekend hours to linger in bed, to read the newspaper and go out
for brunch and share every thought we had. We could have Monday night
dinners and Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night dinners, too. We could
shop for groceries and fold laundry in front of the TV. On the many evenings
when I still got weepy over the loss of my dad, Barack was now there to curl
himself around me and kiss the top of my head.
Barack was relieved to be done with law school, eager to get out of the
abstract realm of academia and into work that felt more engaging and real. He’d
also sold his idea for a nonfiction book about race and identity to a New York
publisher, which for someone who worshipped books as he did felt like an
enormous and humbling boon. He’d been given an advance and had about a year
to complete the manuscript.
Barack had, as he always seemed to, plenty of options. His reputation—the
gushing reports by his law school professors, the New York Times story about his
selection as president of the Law Review—seemed to bring a flood of opportunity.
The University of Chicago offered him an unpaid fellowship that came with a
small office for the year, the idea being that he’d write his book there and maybe
eventually sign on to teach as an adjunct professor at the law school. My
colleagues at Sidley & Austin, still hoping Barack would come work full-time at
the firm, provided him with a desk to use during the eight or so weeks leading up
to his bar exam in July. He was now also considering taking a job at Davis,
Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a small public interest firm that did civil rights and fair
housing work and whose attorneys had been aligned closely with Harold
Washington, which was a huge draw for Barack.
There’s something innately bolstering about a person who sees his
opportunities as endless, who doesn’t waste time or energy questioning whether
they will ever dry up. Barack had worked hard and dutifully for everything he
was now being given, but he wasn’t notching achievements or measuring his
progress against that of others, as so many people I knew did—as I sometimes did
myself. He seemed, at times, beautifully oblivious to the giant rat race of life and
all the material things a thirtysomething lawyer was supposed to be going after,
from a car that wasn’t embarrassing to a house with a yard in the suburbs or a
swank condo in the Loop. I’d observed this quality in him before, but now that
we were living together and I was considering making the first real swerve of my
life, I came to value it even more.