was the end of the workweek, and because I was accustomed to it at this point, it
didn’t bother me that he was late. I knew he’d get there eventually and that my
heart would leap as it always did, seeing him walk through the door and hand his
winter coat off to the hostess before threading his way through the tables,
grinning when his eyes finally landed on mine. He’d kiss me and then take off his
suit jacket, draping it on the back of his chair before sitting down. My husband.
The routine settled me. We ordered the same thing pretty much every Friday—
pot roast, Brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes—and when it came, we ate every
bite.
This was a golden time for us, for the balance of our marriage, him with his
purpose and me with mine. During a single, early week of senate business in
Springfield, Barack had introduced seventeen new bills—possibly a record, and at
the very least a measure of his eagerness to get something done. Some would
ultimately pass, but most would get quickly picked off in the Republican-
controlled chamber, downed by partisanship and a cynicism passed off as
practicality among his new colleagues. I saw in those early months how, just as
I’d predicted, politics would be a fight, and the fight would be wearying,
involving standoffs and betrayals, dirty-deal makers and compromises that
sometimes felt painful. But I saw, too, that Barack’s own forecast had been
correct as well. He was strangely suited to the tussle of lawmaking, calm inside
the maelstrom, accustomed to being an outsider, taking defeats in his easy
Hawaiian stride. He stayed hopeful, insistently so, convinced that some part of his
vision would someday, somehow, manage to prevail. He was getting battered
already, but it wasn’t bothering him. It did seem he was built for this. He’d get
dinged up and stay shiny, like an old copper pot.
I, too, was in the midst of a transition. I’d taken a new job, surprising myself
somewhat by deciding to leave Public Allies, the organization I’d put together
and grown with such care. For three years, I’d given myself to it with zeal, taking
responsibility for the largest and the smallest of operational tasks, right down to
restocking paper in the photocopier. With Public Allies thriving, and its longevity
all but assured thanks to multiyear federal grants and foundation support, I felt
that I could now step away in good faith. And it just so happened that in the fall
of 1996 a new opportunity had cropped up almost out of nowhere. Art Sussman,
the lawyer at the University of Chicago who’d met with me a few years earlier,
called to let me know about a position that had just been created there.
The school was looking for an associate dean to focus on community
relations, committing at long last to do a better job of integrating with the city,