F

It was as if with our date Barack and I had tested a theory and proven both
the best and the worst parts of what we’d suspected all along. The nice part was
that we could step away for a romantic evening the way we used to, years earlier,
before his political life took over. We could, as First Couple, feel close and
connected, enjoying a meal and a show in a city we both loved. The harder part
was seeing the selfishness inherent in making that choice, knowing that it had
required hours of advance meetings between security teams and local police. It
had involved extra work for our staffers, for the theater, for the waiters at the
restaurant, for the people whose cars had been diverted off Sixth Avenue, for the
police on the street. It was part of the new heaviness we lived with. There were
just too many people involved, too many affected, for anything to feel light.

rom the Truman Balcony, I could see the fullness of the garden taking shape
on the southwest corner of the lawn. For me, it was a gratifying sight—a
miniature Eden in progress, made up of spiraling young tendrils and half-grown
shoots, carrot and onion stalks just beginning to rise, the patches of spinach dense
and green, with bright red and yellow flowers blooming around the edges. We
were growing food.

In late June, our original garden-helper crew from Bancroft Elementary
joined me for our first harvest, kneeling together in the dirt to tear off lettuce
leaves and strip pea pods from their stems. This time they were also entertained
by Bo, our puppy, who proved to be a great lover of the garden himself,
bounding in circles around the trees before sprawling belly-up in the sun between
the raised beds.

After our harvest that day, Sam and the schoolkids made salads with their
fresh-picked lettuce and peas in the kitchen, which we then ate with baked
chicken, followed by cupcakes topped with garden berries. In ten weeks, the
garden had generated over ninety pounds of produce—from only about $200
worth of seeds and mulch.

The garden was popular and the garden was wholesome, but I also knew
that for some people it wouldn’t feel like enough. I understood that I was being
watched with a certain kind of anticipation, especially by women, maybe
especially by professional working women, who wondered whether I’d bury my
education and management experience to fold myself into some prescribed First
Lady pigeonhole, a place lined with tea leaves and pink linen. People seemed