soon.
My friends made me whole, as they always have and always will. They gave
me a lift anytime I felt down or frustrated or had less access to Barack. They
grounded me when I felt the pressures of being judged, having everything from
my choice of nail-polish color to the size of my hips dissected and discussed
publicly. And they helped me ride out the big, unsettling waves that sometimes
hit without notice.
On the first Sunday in May 2011, I went to dinner with two friends at a
restaurant downtown, leaving Barack and my mother in charge of the girls at
home. The weekend had seemed especially busy. Barack had been pulled into a
flurry of briefings that afternoon, and we’d spent Saturday evening at the White
House Correspondents’ Dinner, where in his speech Barack made a few pointed
jokes about Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice career and his birther theories. I
couldn’t see him from my seat, but Trump had been in attendance. During
Barack’s monologue, news cameras zeroed in on him, stone-faced and stewing.
For us, Sunday nights tended to be quiet and free. The girls were usually
tired after a weekend of sports and socializing. And Barack, if he was lucky, could
sometimes squeeze in a daytime round of golf on the course at Andrews Air
Force Base, which left him more relaxed.
That night, after catching up with my friends, I arrived home around 10:00,
greeted at the door by an usher, as I always was. Already, I could tell something
was going on, sensing a different-from-normal level of activity on the ground
floor of the White House. I asked the usher if he knew where the president was.
“I believe he’s upstairs, ma’am,” he said, “getting ready to address the
nation.”
This is how I realized that it had finally happened. I knew it was coming,
but I hadn’t known exactly how it would play out. I’d spent the last two days
trying to act completely normal, pretending I didn’t know that something
dangerous and important was about to take place. After months of high-level
intelligence gathering and weeks of meticulous preparation, after security
briefings and risk assessments and a final tense decision, seven thousand miles
from the White House and under cover of darkness, an elite team of U.S. Navy
SEALs had stormed a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, looking for
Osama bin Laden.
Barack was coming out of our bedroom as I walked down the hall in the
residence. He was dressed in a suit and red tie and seemed thoroughly jacked up