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before anyone else woke up.

This left me a little ragged in the evenings and sometimes put me in direct
conflict with my night-owl husband, who turned up on Thursday nights from
Springfield relatively chipper and wanting to dive headfirst into family life,
making up for all the time he’d lost. But time was now officially an issue for us. If
Barack’s disregard for punctuality had once been something I’d gently teased him
about, it was now a straight-up aggravation. I knew that Thursdays made him
happy. I’d hear his excitement when he called to report that he was done with
work and finally headed home. I understood it was nothing but good intentions
that would lead him to say “I’m on my way!” or “Almost home!” And for a
while, I believed those words. I’d give the girls their nightly bath but delay
bedtime so that they could wait up to give their dad a hug. Or I’d feed them
dinner and put them to bed but hold off on eating myself, lighting a few candles
and looking forward to sharing a meal with Barack.

And then I’d wait. I’d wait so long that Sasha’s and Malia’s eyelids would
start to droop and I’d have to carry them to bed. Or I’d wait alone, hungry, and
increasingly bitter as my own eyes got heavy and candle wax pooled on the table.
On my way, I was learning, was the product of Barack’s eternal optimism, an
indication of his eagerness to be home that did nothing to signify when he would
actually arrive. Almost home was not a geo-locator but rather a state of mind.
Sometimes he was on his way but needed to stop in to have one last forty-five-
minute conversation with a colleague before he got into the car. Other times, he
was almost home but forgot to mention that he was first going to fit in a quick
workout at the gym.

In our life before children, such frustrations might have seemed petty, but as
a working full-time mother with a half-time spouse and a predawn wake-up
time, I felt my patience slipping away until finally, at some point, it just fell off a
cliff. When Barack made it home, he’d either find me raging or unavailable,
having flipped off every light in the house and gone sullenly to sleep.

e live by the paradigms we know. In Barack’s childhood, his father
disappeared and his mother came and went. She was devoted to him but never
tethered to him, and as far as he was concerned, there was nothing wrong in this
approach. He’d had hills, beaches, and his own mind to keep him company.
Independence mattered in Barack’s world. It always had and always would. I,