CATHI HANAUER
The truth is, I don’t know much about Michelle Obama, other than what everyone knows. She’s tall, she’s radiant, and yeah, the woman rocks some beautiful clothes. Her smile is both drop-dead and genuine. She can dance, and she’s brilliant. And her arms? I can’t even.
In fact, as a tiny, scrawny white woman who couldn’t dance if the floor was on fire, wouldn’t know a Jason Wu dress from a Target bargain frock, and spends most of her work day in bed under fourteen blankets (I’m a writer, I live in New England, we keep the heat low), I wouldn’t be surprised if someone suggested I’m about as unlike Michelle Obama as two women roughly the same age with two children can be. Yet, in one way—and it’s an important one—I really identify with Michelle. And that’s this: She and I have both had to learn to be The Wife.
* * *
For me, it worked like this. When I met my husband, Dan, I was a 27-year-old magazine editor in New York, working for a well-known monthly in a job that had both glamour and perks. I had landed an internship there the summer before senior year of college; they’d hired me back on graduation, and I’d worked my way up to senior editor by age 25—not so unlike Michelle (other than, okay, our salaries, educations, credentials…), who by 25 was already a successful corporate lawyer in Chicago. My job was fun, challenging, exhilarating. But—like Michelle—I wanted something that felt, to me, a little more meaningful. She wanted, it’s now known, to get out of corporate law and do something that would allow her to “give back” and “exhort others to do the same.” I wanted to write novels.
And so, after a few years of taking fiction workshops at night and spending weekends scribbling away, I applied to MFA programs. I picked one that was both affordable and a nice life-change (Hello, University of Arizona), traded my full-time job for a monthly advice column, at the same magazine, that would mostly fund my new lower-cost life … and off I went to spend a blissful two years in the desert immersed in reading and writing.
That’s where I met Dan.
To be accurate, we met when I flew out to visit the school and asked the director for names of some women in the program I might talk to. Dan was not a woman (nor is he now), but somehow his name made the list, and all the women were too busy while he was happy to grab a free lunch.
* * *
Michelle met Barack when, as a 25-year-old associate at the Sidley & Austin Chicago law firm, she was asked to mentor a summer associate named Barack Obama, a 27-year-old Harvard Law School prodigy who was described by one of his professors as possibly the most gifted student she’d ever taught. Michelle, no sucker for superlatives (she herself was once called, by a partner at S&A, “possibly the most ambitious associate that I’ve ever seen”), was instantly suspicious. What’s with that name? she’s reputed to have thought. And was she really being asked to mentor this dude just because they were both Black in a mostly White firm? Justifiably, she approached the whole thing with a hint of wariness. As she told David Mendell, the author of Obama: From Promise to Power, “I figured he was one of these smooth brothers who could talk straight and impress people.” Still, she took him to lunch, despite his “bad sport jacket and a cigarette dangling from his mouth.”
I, too, had been suspicious when I met Dan. Why was this person available for lunch when so many women weren’t? At the time—in year four of the three-year program—he was teaching a class or two and working on his writing until he figured out what was next. Smart, calm, and contemplative, Dan was a nice contrast to my control-freak, first-born, Type A mania. (In fact, as the second-born of two and a reliable Type B, he was held back in kindergarten because he barely talked before age five; his older brother did the talking for him.) Over sandwiches, I peppered him with questions that were as much about him as about the graduate program.
After college, he’d moved to Park City, Utah, where he worked as a ski instructor (winters) and a janitor (all seasons) for a few years until mopping floors got old and he applied to graduate school and ambled down to Tucson. At the time we met, he was earning about an eighth of what I was, living in a small room in a house with two women (i.e., someone else could be counted on to replace the toilet paper and wipe the counters), and driving a 12-year-old Subaru with nonworking A/C (this was the desert, remember) and 175,000 miles on it.
Similarly, Barack’s car, when he met Michelle, “had so much rust on it that there was a rusted hole in the passenger door,” she told her local newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald. He was broke, his wardrobe was “cruddy,” and he “wasn’t ever going to try to impress me with things.” And yet, somehow he charmed her. After their initial lunch, he took her to a community organizing meeting, and she saw the way he connected with people (getting a hint of the big dreams he had—and that he might actually accomplish some of them). He was “the real deal,” she said. Soon they were dating, and now, rather than being put off by his differences—his white Kansas grandmother, that he was raised “on an island” (Hawaii)—she was intrigued.
Around the same time, 1,700 miles southwest of there, Dan was, for his part, charming me. He wore faded jeans, faded shirts, big (faded) work boots, sunglasses that, when not on his eyes, dangled from a stretchy thing around his neck. (I wore, as he tells it, black Ray Bans that covered most of my face and an enormous black leather coat in the oven-like heat.)
Still, I wouldn’t fall for Dan—or believe he was quite the star he was reputed to be in the program—until I saw his supposedly brilliant stories for myself. So I requested some writing samples from his classes, including, if he dared, his own. And before I knew it, I was sitting in a bubble bath reading one of his stories, and going, “Whoa. This guy can write.”
* * *
One thing led to another, for us and for Michelle and Barack, and one day—in fact, less than three months apart the exact same year—1992—all four of us married: Dan and me, Barack and Michelle. She changed her name; I didn’t; she wore a much more traditional wedding dress (mine was tea length, strapless, and, okay, a little slutty). And then all four of us continued to pursue our work. In Dan’s and my case, we maintained separate residences at first, since I didn’t want a husband distracting me from the novel I was writing. Michelle, it’s been said, felt similarly about her career: “Barack and I have lived very separate professional lives,” she said of their pre-POTUS/FLOTUS years. “He’s done his thing, I do my thing.”1
Dan eventually finished the writing program, with enough published stories to comprise a collection. But he didn’t have luck publishing the book as a whole—which might have led to a teaching job somewhere—so we moved back to New York, and he got a job as an assistant program editor at Stagebill magazine, making $18K a year. Then—praise the lord—I sold my novel in a two-book deal.
We lived in a one-bedroom walkup in a mouse-friendly tenement above a bakery, where the power went out weekly, the couple upstairs fought so violently we once had to call the cops, and, at times, brown water ran mysteriously down our bathroom walls. But we were surviving, sort of, and pursuing our dreams, more or less.
And then I got pregnant. The baby was planned and wanted; we were both 31, ready to attempt a family. But the triple whammy, for me, of nonstop “morning” sickness plus trying to learn how the hell one takes care of a child; a second novel under contract that was proving much harder to write than the first; and the loss of the devoted and insightful community of writers an MFA program can provide—all along with the expense of living in New York—took its toll. And that’s when—like Michelle!—I first realized that motherhood was not something I could do on the side while fulfilling my work ambitions. The next decade for both of us was a nonstop flurry of work, marriage, running a household, and birthing, nursing, and raising two young children. Of it, Michelle—who eventually left corporate law first to work for the mayor, then to direct a program that provided leadership training and mentoring for young people, and then, by the time her older daughter was seven, to be a VP at the University of Chicago Hospitals—has said: “I wake up every morning wondering how on the earth I am going to pull off that next minor miracle of getting through the day.”2
My own similar struggles took the form of creating and editing an essay anthology called The Bitch in the House, which, when published in 2002, became a bestseller. The book was about realizing, once we walked through the doors feminism had opened for my generation and Michelle’s, that at the end of the day, you still were The Mother, The Homemaker, The Wife—all in a manner your husband wasn’t. Put another way: Unless you were one of those rare women who could relinquish the role of Primary Parent and were married to one of those rare men who could and would take it on, your priority had to be the children and running the household. It’s been said that Barack is a loving, compassionate father, and I’m sure that’s the truth; after all, why wouldn’t his naturally warm personality carry down to the way he raises his kids? But it’s also been said that Michelle, gorgeous as she is in designer dresses, still wears the pants in that family when it comes to the family, and I’m sure that’s the truth, too. Someone, after all, has to buy the kids’ clothing, set up the parent-teacher conferences, and know when the daughters’ basketball games are (not to mention bring the sliced oranges on Snack Day and get both parents to show up now and then)—even in the White House. And it’s hard to imagine that someone being the same man who, as a U.S. Senator in 2004—and just as Michelle was asking herself those hard questions about work-life balance—was, as described in the Washington Post, “dazzling the country with his eloquence at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and being talked about as a presidential candidate”;3 even harder to imagine that same someone being the man who was responsible for both the death of Osama bin Laden and the passing of health care reform in America.
Thus, for the Obamas, that person was, and still is, Michelle. Not so much when she married Barack, but when she became a mother, and then when she agreed, albeit reluctantly, first to take leave from her lucrative job to campaign for Barack, and eventually to move her daughters and her own mother from Chicago to D.C. so her husband could become president. In all of those ways, Michelle, arguably as brilliant, talented, and capable as her husband, gave up at least some of the carefully constructed and nurtured career path she saw for herself in order to be President Barack Obama’s faithful wife and FLOTUS.
This is not, mind you, to say that Michelle quit working when her luggage showed up in D.C. The woman is not sitting around eating presidential bon bons at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, though I certainly hope the perks of her job allow her a few now and then. But what did change, work-wise, for Michelle—as it did for me, and as it does for so many college-educated women, particularly once children are involved—is that we both reached a point in our lives and marriages when we agreed to become the “helpmate”—The Wife—as our husbands took on the more important and lucrative work role. We did this for the greater good of our marriages, our families, and in Michelle’s case, the world; and maybe even, as mothers, for ourselves. Michelle became Mrs. President. And I became Mrs. Modern Love.
* * *
This, for me, happened after I published The Bitch in the House, and then Dan followed with The Bastard on the Couch (subtitled 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings about Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom). Cute, right? The New York Times thought so. They asked us to bring that kind of material to their pages by starting an as-yet-unnamed personal essay column about relationships.
By then, we’d left New York and were living a more affordable, child-centered life in a small town in Massachusetts. I was collecting Bitch royalties, writing my novel and occasional magazine pieces, raising the kids, and feeling happier and less overwhelmed than I’d felt in years. Dan, less happily, was underemployed as a consultant for his former full-time New York employer, so he was thrilled about the Times possibility. I—like Michelle when Barack first suggested he might get into politics, and then later when he wanted to run for president—was not. I liked working independently, and I couldn’t, at least for myself, fathom a hard weekly deadline. At that point, we didn’t have a regular babysitter and lived far from family. Our kids attended school at a small public co-op where the parents were required to help out. I put the meals in our fridge and on our table; I—like Michelle, I’m sure—managed the family calendar, the carpools, the sports teams, illnesses and doctors, houseguests and birthday parties. Dan, for his part, did the cars, lawn, bills, home repairs, and technology. He taught the kids Scrabble (and poker), took them to Friendly’s for dinner when I needed time. It worked, for me. I was making a living doing what I wanted, with, finally, the flexibility and headspace to also be the mother I needed to be. I didn’t want to mess with that.
But I also couldn’t exactly say no to the Times offer when Dan wanted it, could I?
So I agreed I would help him launch the column, and then we’d see if he could take it over. Maybe that was just the teensiest bit like Michelle agreeing to help Barack run for president, though in her case knowing that, if he won, it would change her career, her life, and the lives of their family irreparably. But eventually, and happily for us, she came around. “Politics might be a more noble pursuit than she originally believed,” wrote Myra G. Gutin in The Washington Post. Moreover, “running for president was something Barack needed to do or else forever wonder what might have been.”
* * *
It all worked. Barack became our president and Dan became Mr. Modern Love, each man successful at his task while his wife did her part—minor in my case, major in Michelle’s—and also held down the home front. I don’t need to list President Obama’s myriad accomplishments in his eight years on the job. As for Dan’s, now in his twelfth year of editing Modern Love, he’s turned it into one of the most popular features in the Sunday New York Times. The column has spawned a TV pilot, a full-length musical, a CD, fifty books, and a podcast that recently launched as Number One on iTunes. He’s no POTUS, I’m no FLOTUS, our kids are no KOPOTUSes (figure it out). But we are not displeased with—or untickled by—the success of that column, just as, I’m sure, Michelle is not displeased by her husband’s run in the White House, and maybe even, just a little, by the power and respect that his position has brought her.
Still, for her, that respect was neither easy nor immediate. I can’t imagine that, proud as she was of her husband and the work he was doing, there weren’t some moments of ambivalence about his sudden rise to Leader of the Free World while she, a formerly tough-ass lawyer, was now relegated to First Lady and mom-in-chief—even if she’s the one who coined the latter phrase; even if, by that point, she herself said she would, on top of everything else she was handling, only “work” two and a half days a week. Michelle now lived on a stage, and there’s no question she needed to get used to that. Anyone would.
Yet she did it. She amped up her marital and political commitment, learned to be herself without offending the press and the haters, and even seemed to suddenly be having fun in the role—whether swishing for the White House dunk cam, dancing on Ellen, or having Beyoncé play at her birthday bash. What’s more, whatever resentment she still had toward her husband (and let’s face it, we all have some now and then) seemed to morph into a combination of affection and even amusement at his degree of royalty. I picture her watching him, her eyebrows raised as he tries to explain or extricate from something and millions of people hang on his every word, and thinking, Dude, you know you just phoned that one in. To her, he was the same old Barack: sweet, smart, adorable, but leaving his socks by the bed and forgetting to put away the damn butter.
As for me, happy as I was about the success of the Modern Love column, it took some getting used to the fact that, outside of our family, my husband was suddenly and definitely just plain more important than me; that I was now, partly by my own choosing, officially the primary parent and runner of the house. Certainly this was not what I’d anticipated when we’d met, married, and decided to start a family. Everything in my life—from my education to my early jobs to my post-feminist ideas—had led me to believe that my husband and I could work, earn, and parent equally. I simply hadn’t realized how complicated and exhausting and, for me, anger-inducing that would prove to be; that, when I found myself actually in that life—two jobs, two young kids, a bountiful but hamster-wheel life—I’d realize I wanted something a little less exhausting, and overwhelming, and unfair-seeming.
So becoming The Wife was in many ways a blessing and an opportunity for me—I was privileged to be able to cut back a little on my work, which most parents cannot afford to do—but it also, as with Michelle, took a little adjusting. I remember the moment, just a few years ago, when this … demotion? delegation? became most apparent to me. I had published two more books by then—Dan had too—and between books I was doing some editing and low-level writing. I still got the occasional fan letter or invitation to speak at a book club or class, though not compared to my Bitch days, and now, also, not compared to Dan. To be honest, I didn’t mind. I was happy to stay home in pajamas working when I wasn’t walking the dogs, taking a kid for new sneakers, overseeing a school schedule or college visit, grocery shopping, fighting for something important in my town, or even, one year, being the high school soccer booster club president (don’t ask). I had time, now and then, to get a good night’s sleep, read a novel, and enjoy my last few years with my children. I had started a fifth book: The Bitch Is Back, a sequel to the anthology that had spawned all this. But this time, the book was less about anger and more about making choices, in midlife, to find contentment.
Dan, in contrast, was traveling, teaching, speaking, appearing on radio and TV. Everywhere he went, he was swarmed with Modern Love lovers and people who wanted him to publish their essays. On tour for his fourth book, he filled performance spaces from L.A. to D.C. Women flirted and slipped him their manuscripts; men sidled up to make guy talk before mentioning a Modern Love idea they had.
Around that time, we attended a books festival at the University of Arizona—the same place, remember, where I’d once been a cool (if ridiculous) editor in Ray Bans. But now, Dan was the one not only invited to this event but asked to be a featured speaker. He was flown in and put up in a glitzy resort. And though I’d published the same number of books, I was merely “allowed” to come along, as Dan’s wife.
At the opening reception he was a keynote speaker for a room of some 400. His speech was the usual hit; Dan is funny, compassionate, and wry. After the party, as we all milled around, another speaker—a nationally syndicated advice columnist, female and around my age—approached us. She was someone I would have bonded with a decade before; after all, I too had written a national and syndicated advice column, for seven years. I smiled, anticipating maybe chatting a little about editors, about hard questions we’d answered. But she looked past me, walked by, and reached for Dan’s hand.
I felt my face go red, my blood pressure rise. But later, when I thought about it, I didn’t blame her. There’s a sad dichotomy in this country between working women and stay-at-home mothers and wives—something I was well aware of because I had written books about it! I knew this woman figured I’d have nothing of interest to say, in my presumed life of bake sales and mid-day Pilates classes. But I also knew that, in many ways, I had chosen this road I was on.
I suppose I’ve reached the point in the piece where I’m supposed to say, “And Michelle probably feels just like this too!” But now that I’m here, I can only say: Who am I kidding? Michelle is, yes, the POTUS’s faithful wife, but her style and brilliance, her chutzpah and humor, her hard work and bright smile have made her a stellar presence in her own right. Michelle is Michelle. And I can’t wait to see what she does next. And what she does after that, when her children are grown and she can focus with far fewer distractions on her career. She has said she’ll never run for president herself. To that, I say: Never say never, Michelle. Let’s just see where we all are a decade from now.