even when it was bad, so that he could offer a truly informed response. As he saw
it, it was part of his responsibility, what he’d been elected to do—to look rather
than look away, to stay upright when the rest of us felt ready to fall down.
Which is to say that by the time I found him, he’d been briefed in detail on
the graphic, horrid crime scene at Sandy Hook. He’d heard about blood pooled
on the floors of classrooms and the bodies of twenty first graders and six educators
torn apart by a semiautomatic rifle. His shock and grief would never compare
with that of the first responders who’d rushed in to secure the building and
evacuate survivors from the carnage. It was nothing next to that of the parents
who endured an interminable wait in the chilly air outside the building, praying
that they’d see their child’s face again. And it was nothing at all next to those
whose wait would be in vain.
But still, those images were seared permanently into his psyche. I could see
in his eyes how broken they’d left him, what this had done already to his faith.
He started to describe it to me but then stopped, realizing it was better to spare
me the extra pain.
Like me, Barack loved children in a deep and genuine way. Beyond being a
doting father, he regularly brought kids into the Oval Office to show them
around. He asked to hold babies. He lit up anytime he got to visit a school
science fair or a youth sporting event. The previous winter, he’d added a whole
new level of delight to his existence when he started volunteering as an assistant
coach for the Vipers, Sasha’s middle school basketball team.
The proximity of children made everything lighter for him. He knew as
well as anyone the promise lost with those twenty young lives.
Staying upright after Newtown was probably the hardest thing he’d ever had
to do. When Malia and Sasha came home from school later that day, Barack and I
met them in the residence and hugged them tight, trying to mask the urgency of
our need just to touch them. It was hard to know what to say or not say to our
girls about the shooting. Parents all around the country, we knew, were grappling
with the same thing.
Later that day, Barack held a press conference downstairs, trying to put
together words that might add up to something like solace. He wiped away tears
as news cameras clicked furiously around him, understanding that truly there was
no solace to be had. The best he could do was to offer his resolve—something he
assumed would also get taken up by citizens and lawmakers around the country—
to prevent more massacres by passing basic, sensible laws concerning how guns