Obama family

BARACK OBAMA: All my life, I have been stitching together a family, through stories or memories or friends or ideas. Michelle has had a very different background—very stable, two-parent family, mother at home, brother and dog, living in the same house all their lives. We represent two strands of family life in this country—the strand that is very stable and solid, and then the strand that is breaking out of the constraints of traditional families, travelling, separated, mobile. I think there was that strand in me of imagining what it would be like to have a stable, solid, secure family life.

Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both of those things is what attracted me to her. And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.

(im)possibility

I have been having out-of-body experiences lately. Really, it's more of an out-of-life experience. It's the feeling you get when you remember that everything that you can see and hear and smell and touch is practically nothing, compared to the things you are not experiencing. Is it possible to live as if this weren't the case? Is it possible to live without pretending that this is the case? When you think about it, it seems impossible, either way. And yet, life does go on. As they say.

new year blues

I'm feeling a bit sour. The holidays are over and here I am, alone, in 2016. I don't like feeling . . . deprived. I know it's ridiculous, since I have no real need for anything. Oh, well, it's a feeling like all the others, and it will come and go. It is easy to fantasize that someone might know me best.

Yesterday I stopped to say hello to James on my way to the farmers market. It was almost 11 and he was getting in the car to go visit his mother. He asked me, again, about my family and whether I have a boyfriend. He doesn't remember much but he does seem to recognize me. I guess that's what matters, in the end -- the gesture of neighborliness, repeated.

The sun seems to be breaking through the ribbony white clouds. I am going to get up out of this chair and do a load of laundry and maybe I'll bake a breakfast bread involving cranberries.