A

“Tired?”
“Nope.” He smiled up at me, as if trying to prove it was true. Only a day
earlier, we’d received news that Toot, Barack’s eighty-six-year-old grandmother,
had passed away in Hawaii after being sick for months with cancer. Knowing
he’d missed saying good-bye to his mother, Barack had made a point of seeing
Toot. We’d taken the kids to visit her late that summer, and he’d gone again on
his own ten days earlier, stepping off the campaign trail for a day to sit and hold
her hand. It occurred to me what a sad thing this was. Barack had lost his mother
at the very genesis of his political career, two months after announcing his run for
state senate. Now, as he reached its apex, his grandmother wouldn’t be around to
witness it. The people who’d raised him were gone.

“I’m proud of you, no matter what happens,” I said. “You’ve done so much
good.”

He lifted himself out of his seat and put his arms around me. “So have you,”
he said, pulling me close. “We’ve both done all right.”

All I   could   think   about   was everything  he  still   had to  carry.

fter a family dinner at home, we got dressed up and rode downtown to
watch election returns with a small group of friends and family in a suite the
campaign had rented for us at the Hyatt Regency. The campaign staff had
cloistered itself in a different area of the hotel, trying to give us some privacy. Joe
and Jill Biden had their own suite for friends and family across the hall.

The first results came in around 6:00 p.m. central time, with Kentucky
going for McCain and Vermont for Barack. Then West Virginia went for
McCain, and after that so did South Carolina. My confidence lurched a little,
though none of this was a surprise. According to Axe and Plouffe, who were
buzzing in and out of the room, announcing what felt like every sliver of
information they received, everything was unfolding as predicted. Though the
updates were generally positive, the political chatter was the last thing I wanted to
hear. We had no control over anything anyway, so what was the point? We’d
leaped and now, one way or another, we’d land. We could see on TV that
thousands of people were already amassing at Grant Park, a mile or so away on
the lakefront, where election coverage was being broadcast on Jumbotron screens
and where Barack would later show up to deliver one of his two speeches. There