sweatpants, blessedly out of sight of everyone.
I understood how lucky we were to be living this way. The master suite in
the residence was bigger than the entirety of the upstairs apartment my family had
shared when I was growing up on Euclid Avenue. There was a Monet painting
hanging outside my bedroom door and a bronze Degas sculpture in our dining
room. I was a child of the South Side, now raising daughters who slept in rooms
designed by a high-end interior decorator and who could custom order their
breakfast from a chef.
I had these thoughts sometimes, and it gave me a kind of vertigo.
I tried, in my way, to loosen the protocol of the place. I made it clear to the
housekeeping staff that our girls, as they had in Chicago, would make their own
beds every morning. I also instructed Malia and Sasha to act as they’d always
acted—to be polite and gracious and to not ask for anything more than what they
absolutely needed or couldn’t get for themselves. But it was important to me,
too, that our daughters feel released from some of the ingrown formalities of the
place. Yes, you can throw balls in the hallway, I told them. Yes, you can rummage
through the pantry looking for snacks. I made sure they knew they didn’t have to ask
permission to go outside and play. I was heartened one afternoon during a
snowstorm when I caught sight of the two of them through the window,
sledding on the slope of the South Lawn, using plastic trays lent to them by the
kitchen staff.
The truth was that in all of this the girls and I were supporting players,
beneficiaries of the various luxuries afforded to Barack—important because our
happiness was tied to his; protected for one reason, which was that if our safety
was compromised, so too would be his ability to think clearly and lead the
nation. The White House, one learns, operates with the express purpose of
optimizing the well-being, efficiency, and overall power of one person—and
that’s the president. Barack was now surrounded by people whose job was to
treat him like a precious gem. It sometimes felt like a throwback to some lost era,
when a household revolved solely around the man’s needs, and it was the
opposite of what I wanted our daughters to think was normal. Barack, too, was
uncomfortable with the attention, though he had little control over all the fuss.
He now had about fifty staffers reading and answering his mail. He had
Marine helicopter pilots standing by to fly him anywhere he needed to go, and a
six-person team that organized thick briefing books so he could stay current on
the issues and make educated decisions. He had a crew of chefs looking after his