A Moving Article about Barack Obama's Mother

The article is here: "Free-spirited wanderer set Obama's path. 'What is best in me I owe to her,' candidate has said of his idealistic mother".

One of the reasons I jumped on the Obama bandwagon fairly late is that I felt such a strong identification with him. I really didn't want that to influence my political judgement, so I stayed neutral for a long time. Here are some reasons why I identify with him. The article raised several more reasons.

- both third-culture kids
- growing up in environments as the racial outsider
- being multiracial, with a white mother, but identifying primarily as single-race
- lack of strong ties to father's home country (although my own father was much more present throughout my life than his father)
- single, hard-working, unconventional, fearless, idealistic, generous, strong-willed, competent, independent mother
- close relationship with maternal grandparents
- very close relationship with mother

When I was 15, I went off to boarding school. By the age of 16, I'd left that school, our finances had changed drastically, and I was working as a waitress and mostly supporting myself. I was ready to leave home at 15; I was always very independent. But that didn't mean I had conflicts with my mother. It was something we both agreed on. We've always been very close, even when we lived far apart. We live close now, and we have dinner with her almost every other night. When I hear about people who have bad or distant relationships with their mothers I just sigh and say "I'm sorry". I do my best to empathize, I really am sorry, it's just hard to put myself in their shoes.

This was the part that really got to me... I teared up a little.

"I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book — less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life," he wrote in the preface to his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." He added, "I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her."

I rarely talk about my mother. She's so close to me, it's hard to even see her. But if she ever went away, I don't know what I'd do.