B

the United States, I was more like them than they knew. That I, too, was from a
working-class neighborhood, raised by a family of modest means and loving
spirit, that I’d realized early on that school was where I could start defining myself
—that an education was a thing worth working for, that it would help spring
them forward in the world.

At this point, I’d been First Lady for just over two months. In different
moments, I’d felt overwhelmed by the pace, unworthy of the glamour, anxious
about our children, and uncertain of my purpose. There are pieces of public life,
of giving up one’s privacy to become a walking, talking symbol of a nation, that
can seem specifically designed to strip away part of your identity. But here,
finally, speaking to those girls, I felt something completely different and pure—an
alignment of my old self with this new role. Are you good enough? Yes, you are, all
of you. I told the students of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson that they’d touched my
heart. I told them that they were precious, because they truly were. And when
my talk was over, I did what was instinctive. I hugged absolutely every single girl
I could reach.

ack home in Washington, spring had arrived. The sun came up earlier and
stayed out a little longer each day. I watched as the slope of the South Lawn
gradually turned a lush and vibrant green. From the windows of the residence, I
could see the red tulips and lavender grape hyacinth that surrounded the fountain
at the base of the hill. My staff and I had spent the past two months working to
turn my idea for a garden into reality, which hadn’t been easy. For one thing,
we’d had to persuade the National Park Service and the White House grounds
team to tear up a patch of one of the most iconic lawns in the world. The very
suggestion had been met with resistance, initially. It had been decades since a
White House Victory Garden had been planted, on Eleanor Roosevelt’s watch,
and no one seemed much interested in a reprise. “They think we’re insane,” Sam
Kass told me at one point.

Eventually, though, we got our way. We were at first allotted a tiny plot of
land tucked away behind the tennis courts, next to a toolshed. To his credit, Sam
fought for better real estate, finally securing an L-shaped eleven-hundred-square-
foot plot in a sun-splashed part of the South Lawn, not far from the Oval Office
and the swing set we’d recently installed for the girls. We coordinated with the
Secret Service to make sure our tilling wouldn’t disrupt any of the sensors or sight