ahead of the inauguration, which meant that we had to make temporary
arrangements, renting rooms on the top floor of the Hay-Adams hotel in the
center of the city. Our rooms overlooked Lafayette Square and the North Lawn
of the White House, where we could see the grandstand and metal bleachers
being set up in preparation for the inaugural parade. On a building across from
the hotel, someone had hung a massive banner that read, “Welcome Malia and
Sasha.” I choked up a little at the sight.
After a lot of research, two visits, and many conversations, we’d opted to
enroll our daughters at Sidwell Friends, a private Quaker school with an excellent
reputation. Sasha would be a second grader in the lower school, which was
located in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, and Malia would attend fifth grade on
the main campus, which sat on a quiet block just a few miles north of the White
House. Both kids would need to commute by motorcade, escorted by a group of
armed Secret Service agents, some of whom would also remain posted outside
their classroom doors and follow them to every recess, playdate, and sports
practice.
We lived in a kind of bubble now, sealed off at least partially from the
everyday world. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d run an errand by myself or
walked in a park just for fun. All movements first required a discussion about
both security and schedule. The bubble had formed around us slowly over the
course of the campaign as Barack’s notoriety grew and as it became more
necessary to put boundaries up between us and the general public—and, in some
instances, between us and our friends and family members. It was odd, being in
the bubble, and not a feeling I particularly enjoyed, but I also understood it was
for the best. With a regular police escort, our vehicles no longer stopped at traffic
lights. We rarely walked in or out of a building’s front door when we could be
rushed through a service entrance or loading dock on a side street. From the
Secret Service’s point of view, the less visible we could be, the better.
I held on to a hope that Sasha and Malia’s bubble might be different, that
they could remain safe but not contained, that their range would be greater than
ours. I wanted them to make friends, real friends—to find kids who liked them
for reasons other than that they were Barack Obama’s daughters. I wanted them
to learn, to have adventures, to make mistakes and bounce back. I hoped that
school for them would be a kind of shelter, a place to be themselves. Sidwell
Friends appealed to us for a lot of reasons, including the fact that it was the school
Chelsea Clinton had attended when her father was president. The staff knew how
to safeguard the privacy of high-profile students and had already made the sorts of