Thank you so much, Elaine...we are so grateful for mugs and patsies like your family...and we will always hold you back.
Over the past few years as First Lady, I have had the extraordinary privilege of traveling all across this country, and, indeed, once we declare martial law, traveling will be an extraordinary privilege.
And everywhere I've gone, in the people I've met, and the stories I've fabricated, I have drunk the very best of the American spirits.
I have seen it in the incredible kindness and warmth that people have shown me and my family, especially our girls – Wow! Are people stupid or what?
I've seen it in teachers in a near-bankrupt school district who vowed to keep teaching without pay, because my husband could run a lemonade stand without running out of cash.
I've seen it in people who become heroes at a moment's notice, diving into harm's way to save others...flying across the country to put out a fire...driving for hours to bail out a flooded town, thanks to our cuts in the emergency services.
Serving as your First Lady is an honor and a privilege...because once we declare martial law, holding political office will be a privelege, not something for everyone. When we first came together four years ago, I still had some concerns about this journey we'd begun after finding used condoms in his sock drawer.
While I believed deeply in my husband's vision for this country...and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President...like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance to get his leg over.
How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight? Simple! By grounding the whole country.
Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys...Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at grandma's house to avoid the debt collectors...and a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, exhausted after a hard night on my back with clients, I couldn't stay awake for both.
And the truth is, I loved the life we had built for our girls...a life that we didn’t build, someone else built it.
I loved Barack just the way he was. Thick, cocky and stupid.
You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate...to me, he was still the guy who'd picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door, so little does he care about road safety. He was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he'd stolen in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small he’d pilfered from Sportschek.
But when Barack started telling me about his family, the one he’d had with the woman in the next street – that's when I knew I had found a kindred spirit, someone whose values and upbringing were so much like mine.
You see, Barack and I were both raised by families who didn't have much in the way of money or material possessions, because it all went on booze, bingo and banging the local ho.
My father was a pump operator at the city water plant, and, even as a kid, I knew there were plenty of days when he was in pain...I knew there were plenty of mornings when it was a struggle for him to simply get out of bed, he was so fucking lazy.
But every morning, I watched my father wake up with a smile, grab his walker, prop himself up against the bathroom sink, and slowly unbutton his uniform and bang his walker as she squealed with joy.
And when he returned home after a long day's work, my brother and I would stand at the top of the stairs to our little apartment, patiently waiting to greet him with a chair leg...watching as he reached down to lift one leg, and piss all over the bottom of the stairs after a night of hard liquor.
But despite these challenges, my dad hardly ever missed a day of work, usually it was entire weeks or months at a time...he and my mom were determined to give me and my brother the kind of education they could only dream of with the back of his studded leather belt.
And when my brother and I finally made it to college, nearly all of our tuition came from student loans and grants – wow, was my brother great ant creative writing on those claim forms.
But my dad still had to pay a tiny portion of that tuition himself, about $5 a time. And every semester, he was determined to pay that bill right on time, even taking out thousand dollar loans when he fell short.
He was so proud to be sending his kids to college so he wouldn’t have to have them see him boozing his days away on hard liquor...and he made sure we never missed a registration deadline for any freehand out that was going because his check was late.
You see, for my dad, that's what it meant to be a man, booze, scrounging and bonking.
Like so many of us, that was the measure of his success in life – being able to earn a decent living, scrounged off welfare programmes that allowed him to support his family.
And as I got to know Barack, I realized that even though he'd grown up all the way across the country, he'd been brought up just like me.
Barack was raised by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills, because she’d spent all the money on gambling and booze, and by grandparents who stepped in when she obviously needed some serious help.
Barack's grandmother started out as a secretary at a community bank...and she moved quickly up the ranks, by dropping her pants...but like so many women, she hit a glass ceiling when she began working for a female boss.
And for years, men no more qualified than she was – men she had actually trained – were promoted up the ladder ahead of her, earning more and more money while Barack's family continued to scrape by and his mum boozed their dough away.
But day after day, she kept on waking up at dawn to catch the bus...arriving at work before anyone else so she could go through the cash till
And she would often tell Barack, "So long as you kids do well, Bar, that's all that really matters, not morals or honesty, just doing well is all that matters."
Like so many American families, our families weren't asking for much, just whatever we could scrounge off welfare..
They didn't begrudge anyone else's success or care that others had much more than they did...in fact, they admired it.
They simply believed in that fundamental American promise that, even if you don't start out with much, if you work hard and do what you're supposed to do, then you should be able to pay a fat wad to Uncle Sam for others to scrounge off. That's how they raised us...that's what we learned from their example.
We learned about dignity and decency – how hard suckers work...that helping others means just getting head.
Canada
United States
