All Aboard!
The Obama train stopped at Union Station tonight but the DC folks didn’t get a glimpse. Not the ones who came to this train station/indoor mall hoping to see him anyway. A television reporter who saw me clicking away at the hordes of police squad cars and motorcycles had obviously missed the President-elect, too.
“Did you get a picture of his car?” he asked hopefully. I wonder what that photo or video was worth?
The picture I would have paid to see was a glimpse of day’s end for the Obamas. It was Michelle Obama’s 45th birthday. Her 44th year was one for the books (that family should play 44 on the roulette wheel sometime). It truly must be surreal for them and they must be so ready for their “new” normal life to begin.
The family is living at Blair House now. That’s the third move in a few days as the Obamas inch ever closer to the White House. From their family home in Hyde Park to Hay-Adams to Blair House to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s a lot of different beds to sleep in. Could any Mom and Dad manage that roller coaster?
It took an hour to quiet my big kids in a hotel tonight. Imagine enforcing that famous 8:30 curfew with the circus of the Inauguration going on around you. Add to that the fact that the girls are in a new school, and I bet bedtime is brimful of kid tricks, giggles, complaints: “I miss my friends; This school is so hard/so easy; They call on me all the time/they never call on me.”
When you put the kids down tonight and say a little, exhausted prayer, think of Barack and Michelle. If you wish your children were simpler, imagine how hard it would be to keep kids normal when suddenly there are cut out paper dolls of them on souvenir stands.
I am betting Michelle Obama gives those gals what for when they need it. And before she let’s them get their mani-pedis and put on their Maria Pinto parade dresses, I hope she kicks them out of bed and drags them to RFK stadium to makes them pack gift boxes for veterans.
For as one President used to say: to whom much has been given, much will be expected. And Mama Obama will be expecting a great deal.