The Obamas, a Love Story
January 21, 2009 by Julia King
Truth be told, I feel like a school girl. When President Obama and the First Lady took the dance floor for their official first dance at the Neighborhood Ball in Washington, D.C, — and Beyonce serenaded them with “At Last“… it was chills all up and down my spine.
“Come see!” I shouted to my teenage daughter who was upstairs, “The Obamas are dancing! Beyonce’s singing! It’s perfect! Come see!” My daughter plopped down on the couch and added her approval. Yes, it was perfect, she agreed. But then she got up and wandered back upstairs to play with her hair as I sat transfixed. The First Couple swayed to the music and smiled at one another, gazing into each others’ eyes, managing somehow to be up on a stage looking both public and private. Charged with layers of meaning, the lyrics fell upon a man and woman, a room, a nation, a world.
…The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known…
In the Jan. 19 issue of the New Yorker, there’s an excerpt from a 1996 Mariana Cook interview with Michelle and Barack Obama in their Chicago apartment. Just four years into their marriage, the photo that accompanies the article shows a young, affectionate pair, a husband and wife at ease with physical touch. They sit on their sofa together; he leans against the couch with one arm perched on its back and the other curved around her, his hand resting on her thigh. She leans against him with both her hands meeting on one of his knees. All these years later, that physical closeness remains.
The way so many of us feel when we look at Barack and Michelle – whether they’re giving speeches, or tending to their children, or dancing at a ball – has always been about more than them. It is about us, too… about the way we love our own spouses, and our own children, about the timeless desire to share our lives with another.
I know. It can be perilous to believe in true love (especially someone else’s), but not to believe might be worse.
Welcome to the White House, Mr. President and First Lady. We’re going to love having you.
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Well said, Julia, and thank you.
Knowing that someone as politically astute as you can let yourself “feel like a school girl” at times like these is refreshing. It keeps that spark of belief going in someone like me, who won’t often admit to feeling like a school girl for fear of being held to a standard of hope that often eludes me.