Valley. We visited the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to see how dollars got
made and toured Frederick Douglass’s house in the southeast part of Washington,
learning how an enslaved person could become a scholar and a hero. For a while,
I required the girls to write up a little report after each visit, summarizing what
they had learned, though eventually they started protesting and I let the idea go.
As often as we could, we scheduled these outings for first thing in the
morning or late in the day so that the Secret Service could clear the site or rope
off an area ahead of our arrival without causing too much of a hassle. We were
still a nuisance, I knew, though without Barack along we were at least somewhat
less of a nuisance. And when it came to the girls, anyway, I tried to let go of any
guilt. I wanted our kids to be able to move with the same kind of freedom that
other kids had.
One day, earlier in the year, I’d had a dustup with the Secret Service when
Malia had been invited to join a group of school friends who were making a
spur-of-the-moment trip to get some ice cream. Because for security reasons she
wasn’t allowed to ride in another family’s car, and because Barack and I had our
daily schedules diced down to the minute and set weeks in advance, Malia was
told she’d have to wait an hour while the leader of her security detail was
summoned from the suburbs, which of course then merited a bunch of apologetic
phone calls and delayed everyone involved.
This was exactly the kind of heaviness I didn’t want for my daughters. I
couldn’t contain my irritation. To me, it made no sense. We had agents standing
in practically every hallway of the White House. I could look out the window
and see Secret Service vehicles parked in the circular drive. But for some reason,
she couldn’t just get my permission and head off to join her friends. Nothing
could be done without her detail leader.
“This isn’t how families work or how ice cream runs work,” I said. “If
you’re going to protect a kid, you’ve got to be able to move like a kid.” I went
on to insist that the agents revise their protocols so that in the future Malia and
Sasha could leave the White House safely and without some massive advance
planning effort. For me, it was another small test of the boundaries. Barack and I
had by now let go of the idea that we could be spontaneous. We’d surrendered to
the idea that there was no longer room for impulsiveness and whimsy in our own
lives. But for our girls, we’d fight to keep that possibility alive.