Chapter 3
“We got a call,” the agent said. “You have to go home.”
I drove straight to Willow Grove. My mother was dying.
All my sisters came to the house and got into bed with her.
Even though she wasn’t conscious, my mother held on until Sunday, when all five of us were there with her, and then she died.
As the eldest, I was now the head of the family.
We made funeral arrangements. I stayed home for a couple of days and then resumed the campaign.
As soon as my mother’s death was announced, Michelle Obama called from the campaign trail. After offering heartfelt condolences, she said, “I’ll see you at the funeral.” I was overwhelmed by her kindness.
I hadn’t gotten to know Michelle when we were both Senate spouses—I lived in Delaware, she lived in Chicago, and we both had full-time jobs, plus kids in school, so it was rare that we interacted.
In spite of our husbands being on the same ticket, and in spite of my admiration of her, we hadn’t spent much time together yet, and so I hesitated before I spoke.
“Michelle, I don’t know how to tell you this,” I said, “but I have four sisters. This funeral is going to be so hard on them, and it has to be about my sisters losing a mother. It can’t be just me, right?
I’m afraid that if you’re there, the press will treat it as a major event and pull focus away from my sisters.
Your offer is so incredibly generous, but I think it’s better if you don’t come. Does that make sense?”
Saying all that felt awkward, but of course Michelle instantly put me at ease.
“I totally get it,” she said.
No more had to be said. As someone who’d done her best to cultivate privacy for her own family, she just knew.
I grew up in middle-class America of the 1950s and ’60s.
I loved my teachers, made my own Christmas gifts, traipsed to the library every week, and rode my bike everywhere.
Our parents were often playful with each other.
Friends were always stopping by, the house full of people enjoying games like Ping-Pong and checkers.
Our father fought in World War II as a signalman in the Navy, and he was very patriotic. He would take us to watch the Blue Angels, remarking on each awe-inspiring feat of the Navy squadron. He played John Philip Sousa marches on the hi-fi and flew the American flag by our front door on holidays.
If we adored our father, we worshipped our mother. We could and did tell her everything—when we went out drinking, our first kisses, who was doing what with whom. She always offered sage advice.
Once, I argued with a friend named Toni over a boy we both liked named Timmy.
(Isn’t it amazing how names like that stick with us through the years?
Until now, I hadn’t thought of him since I was a teenager.) Toni called me up and said she wanted to discuss him.
My mother said, “You have her come here. You always fight your battles on your own turf.” Toni came over to have it out with me, asserting her right to Timmy.
In the end, we both decided he wasn’t worth it, and he started dating someone else entirely.
My mother had me when she was twenty, so she seemed young to me my whole life.
She also had a young spirit. I can barely remember an argument with her.
One time, she came after my sisters and me with a hairbrush to punish us for something, but far from being scared of her, we all wound up laughing hysterically—our mother included.
She loved to read, and that had a great influence on me, but she was hardly a shrinking violet.
She was so vibrant, so passionate, not above starting a food fight.
Her death was devastating to my sisters and me.
For me, time with my sisters—who live relatively nearby, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania—is always a great stress reliever, and just fun.
They love to go to the beach and to cook amazing meals.
When we get together, we can say anything to one another.
There’s such a bond of trust there, a safe space we cherish.
During various health crises, my sisters and I have seen one another through the anxiety and the recovery.
In times of joy, we are all there to celebrate.
Growing up, the five of us girls were essentially two separate families because of our age differences.
My sister Jan’s a year behind me, and my sister Bonny is three years behind Jan.
The three of us were wrapped up in our parents’ unconditional love, with a coziness and routine straight out of Ozzie and Harriet.
That said, we had very little money. Jan, Bonny, and I lived through our family’s lean years in a small two-bedroom house.
For vacations, we might do a day trip to the beach.
We never, ever went out to a restaurant.
The big treat was packed ice cream on nights when we watched Ed Sullivan.
The three of us slept in three beds wedged against the walls of one room.
Then, when I was fifteen years old, my mother, at age thirty-five, found herself pregnant—to her surprise, with twins.
I was out of the house by the time they were out of diapers, and Kelly and Kim had a totally different childhood.
My father’s career as a banker had taken off, so the twins grew up in a bigger house, with their own rooms. They stayed at the shore for two weeks on vacation, and they got to buy whatever they wanted—at Lord & Taylor!
I’d never been fully aware of the disparity until we started sharing memories as adults.
For so many years, I’d been caught in a 1950s time warp, busy with marriage, divorce, a new family, the Senate.
How good it has felt to reconnect with my sisters as grown women, some of us now mothers and grandmothers ourselves, with our own achievements and rich lives to share.
We all have roles in a family. As the eldest daughter, I think I’ve tended to be the strong one, the one who keeps it together when others are unraveling.
That’s who I’ve been to my kids, my grandkids, and my sisters, too, particularly since the death of our mother.
But with my sisters, I can relax in a way that can be difficult with other people.
We know one another so well, and trust one another so fully.
They cheered me on as I crisscrossed the country in support of Joe’s campaigns.
They’ve kept me grounded, and they value their own privacy as much as they protect mine.
To cope with stress and stay healthy, I’ve always done my best to work out every day, usually at SoulCycle or Barre3. Once at a Sephora after a cycle class, someone said to Kim, “I just saw Jill Biden!”
“Wow!” Kim said, not mentioning that she was my sister.
I think most women realize the importance of sisterhood—whether it’s at work, at church, or at a book club.
I’ve seen how women offer support to one another’s families through raising children, coping with illness, and handling financial hardship.
I experienced this as a young girl when all the women in my middle-class neighborhood became my “aunts.”
In the 1960s and ’70s, “sisterhood” became a broader term signifying support for Title IX (the civil-rights-in-education amendment), equal pay for women entering the workforce, and the Equal Rights Amendment.
We read Ms. magazine and came to see Gloria Steinem as an icon.
Still, when Geraldine Ferraro was chosen by Walter Mondale as VP, it was clear that much of the country still found the notion of a woman in that position of power almost unthinkable.
In our middle years, it’s the women in our lives who support us through childbirth, or carpooling, or other obligations. Who is the one who leaves a lasagna in your fridge or a roast chicken on your kitchen counter when times are tough?
Jan, Bonny, Kim, Kelly—and my longtime friends Mary Ann and Mary—have done so much to help me through tough times, whether at the White House or in Wilmington.
Thanks to my time as First Lady, I have a direct line to practically anyone in the world, and yet when I really need a friend, there’s no one I’d rather call than them.