B

meant occasionally disrupting the flow at work, and didn’t try to
compartmentalize work and home the way I’d noticed male partners at Sidley
seemed to do. I’m not sure compartmentalization was even a choice for Valerie
and Susan, given that they were juggling the expectations unique to mothers and
were also both divorced, which came with its own emotional and financial
challenges. They weren’t striving for perfect, but managed somehow to be always
excellent, the two of them bound in a deep and mutually helpful friendship,
which also made a real impression on me. They’d dropped any masquerade and
were just wonderfully, powerfully, and instructively themselves.

arack and I came back from our honeymoon in Northern California to both
good and bad news. The good news came in the form of the November election,
which brought what felt like a tide of encouraging change. Bill Clinton won
overwhelmingly in Illinois and across the country, moving President Bush out of
office after only one term. Carol Moseley Braun also won decisively, becoming
the first African American woman ever to hold a Senate seat. What was even
more exciting to Barack was that the Election Day turnout had been nothing
short of epic: Project VOTE! had directly registered 110,000 new voters, and its
broader get-out-the-vote campaign had likely boosted overall turnout as well.

For the first time in a decade, over half a million black voters in Chicago
went to the polls, proving that they had the collective power to shape political
outcomes. This sent a clear message to lawmakers and future politicians and
reestablished a feeling that seemed to have been lost when Harold Washington
died: The African American vote mattered. It would be costly politically for
anyone to ignore or discount black people’s needs and concerns. Inside of this,
too, was a secondary message to the black community itself, a reminder that
progress was possible, that our worth was measurable. All this was heartening for
Barack. As tiring as it was, he’d loved his job for what it taught him about
Chicago’s complex political system and for proving that his organizing instincts
could work on a larger scale. He’d collaborated with grassroots leaders, everyday
citizens, and elected officials, and almost miraculously it had yielded results.
Several media outlets noted the impressive impact of Project VOTE! A writer for
Chicago magazine described Barack as “a tall, affable workaholic,” suggesting that
he should someday run for office, an idea that he simply shrugged off.

And  here    was     the     bad     news:   That    tall,   affable     workaholic  I’d     just    married