The Truths We Hold
Page 13
While I was speaking, I noticed that two of my staffers were whispering to each other while pointing to a man in the audience. I couldn’t hear them, but I knew exactly what they were saying: “Who’s that guy? Is that him?” And I knew they were saying it because that guy was Doug.
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• • •
Six months earlier, I hadn’t known who that guy Doug was, either. I just knew that my best friend, Chrisette, was blowing up my phone. I was in the middle of a meeting, and my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. I ignored her call the first several times, but then I started to get worried. Her children are my godchildren. Had something happened?
I stepped out and called her.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything is great. You’re going on a date,” she said.
“I am?”
“You are,” she replied with total certainty. “I just met this guy. He’s cute and he’s the managing partner of his law firm and I think you’re going to really like him. He’s based in Los Angeles, but you’re always here for work anyway.”
Chrisette is like a sister to me, and I knew there was no use in arguing with her.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“His name is Doug Emhoff, but promise me you won’t Google him. Don’t overthink it. Just meet him. I already gave him your number. He’s going to reach out.”
Part of me groaned, but at the same time, I appreciated Chrisette’s take-charge approach. She was one of the only people to whom I could talk candidly about my personal life. As a single, professional woman in my forties, and very much in the public eye, dating wasn’t easy. I knew that if I brought a man with me to an event, people would immediately start to speculate about our relationship. I also knew that single women in politics are viewed differently than single men. We don’t get the same latitude when it comes to our social lives. I had no interest in inviting that kind of scrutiny unless I was close to sure I’d found “the One”—which meant that for years, I kept my personal life compartmentalized from my career.
A few nights later, I was on my way to an event when I received a text from a number I didn’t recognize. Doug was watching a basketball game with a friend, and he’d worked up the courage to send me an awkward text. “Hey! It’s Doug. Just saying hi! I’m at the Lakers game.” I wrote back to say hi, and we made plans to talk the following day. Then I punctuated it with my own bit of awkwardness—“Go Lakers!”—even though I’m really a Warriors fan.
The next morning, I was leaving the gym before work when I noticed that I had missed a call from Doug. Even though I had suggested we connect the following day, I hadn’t expected him to reach out that early. But I found it pretty endearing, I’ll admit. In fact, while I was writing this chapter, I sat down with Doug and asked him to explain what was going through his head when he made that call. This is what he said:
I got up early that morning. I had an early meeting. And as I was driving to work, I couldn’t get you off my mind. And I kept saying to myself, “It’s eight thirty a.m., it’s way too early to call her. That would be ridiculous. Don’t be that guy. Just don’t. Don’t call her. Don’t do it.” And then, “Oh no, I just rang her number,” and, “Oh no, it’s ringing.
The voicemail, which I still have saved to this day, was long and a little rambling. He sounded like a nice guy, though, and I was intrigued to learn more. Doug, on the other hand, was pretty sure that he had ruined his chances. The way he tells it, he thought his voicemail had been disastrous and that he’d likely never hear from me again. He had to restrain himself from calling again and leaving another long-winded message trying to explain away the first one.
But fate was smiling on us. As it happens, I own an apartment in San Francisco, and, after saving up for years to redo my kitchen, the work was finally about to start. That day, I was supposed to meet the contractor and his team to show them in and give them keys, but when I got to the apartment, I learned the contractor was running late, and I would have to wait.
In other words, I found myself with a free hour for lunch—something that almost never happened. So I decided I’d give Doug a call. Maybe he was on a lunch break, too.
He answered, and we ended up on the phone for the entire hour. It sounds corny, I know, but the conversation just flowed; and even though I’m sure that both of us were trying extra hard to seem witty and interesting, most of all I remember us cracking each other up, joking and laughing at ourselves and with each other, just the way we do now. By the time the contractor arrived, I was genuinely excited to meet this Doug guy in person. We made dinner plans for Saturday night in Los Angeles. I could hardly wait to fly down.
Doug suggested that we meet first at his place. I suggested that he pick me up instead. “Okay, but I just need you to know I’m not a really good driver,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know,” I replied with a chuckle. There was no pretense or posing with Doug, no arrogance or boasting. He seemed so genuinely comfortable with himself. It’s part of why I liked him immediately.
The morning after our first date, Doug emailed me with all of his available dates for the next couple of months. “I’m too old to play games or hide the ball,” the email read. “I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work.” In fact, he was eager to see me that Saturday, but I had a long-scheduled girls’ weekend on the calendar.
“That’s no problem,” he said. “I could come up and you and I could just sneak off on the margins.” I appreciated his enthusiasm, but I had to explain to him that, no, that’s not how a girls’ weekend works. We planned a second date for later that week instead.
For our third date, Doug decided that a grand gesture was in order. He flew to Sacramento to meet me for dinner. After that, we knew we had something special. We agreed to commit to each other for six months, and to reevaluate our relationship at the end of it. Attending a speech about the ills of truancy isn’t exactly what most people think of as a romantic date, but the event was Doug’s coming out—the first time I’d invited him to join me at a professional gathering. Hence the whispering and pointing among my team, who had heard rumors of his existence but hadn’t seen him with their own eyes. They would later refer to that era as A.D.—“After Doug.” They loved how much he made me laugh. I did, too.
Doug had been married once before, and he had two kids, Cole and Ella—named after John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald. When Doug and I first started dating, Ella was in middle school and Cole was in high school; Doug shared custody with his first wife, Kerstin. I had—and have—tremendous admiration and respect for Kerstin. I could tell from the way Doug talked about his kids that she was a terrific mother—and in later months, as Kerstin and I got to know each other, we really hit it off ourselves and became friends. (We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.)
After our second date, Doug was ready to introduce me to Cole and Ella, and I was eager to meet them, too. But as a child of divorce, I knew how hard it can be when your parents start to date other people. So I slowed things down. Other than occasionally talking to the kids when Doug had me on speakerphone in the car, I wanted to make sure that Doug and I had something real and lasting before I waded into Cole’s and Ella’s lives.
Doug and I put a lot of thought into when and how that first meeting should transpire. We waited until about two months after we’d met, although in my memory it feels like we’d been together for a long time—maybe because the buildup was so great, or because, by the time the big day finally arrived, I felt like I’d loved Doug for years.
I woke up that morning feeling incredibly excited, but also with some butterflies in my stomach. Until that moment, I’d known Cole and Ella as gorgeous faces in Doug’s photographs, charming characters in his stories, the central figures in his heart. Now I was finally going to meet these two amazing young people. It was a momentous occasion.
The ribbon was probably too much. But Cole and Ella could not have been more welcoming. They’d been wanting to meet me, too. We talked for a few minutes, then piled into Doug’s car for dinner together. Doug and I had decided the kids should choose where we ate, to make everything as comfortable as possible. They’d picked a place that had been a favorite since they were younger—a seafood hut off the Pacific Coast Highway called the Reel Inn. It was about an hour away in traffic, which gave us some quality car time to get to know one another. Cole, it turned out, was a music aficionado, and he was excited to share some of his latest discoveries with me.
“I just started listening to Roy Ayers,” he said. “Do you know him?”
I sang back: “Everybody loves the sunshine, sunshine, folks get down in the sunshine . . .”
“You know it!”
“Of course I know it!”
We put on the song, and then another and another. The four of us sang together with the windows rolled down as we drove up the coast to dinner.
The Reel Inn was casual and unpretentious. It was hard not to feel at ease. We waited in line with trays at a counter, the menu of fresh fish written on a blackboard on the wall. The cashier gave us numbers, much like at a deli, and when our order was called, we took our trays to some picnic tables with a view of the ocean, just as the sun was beginning to set. When we were done eating, Cole and Ella told us that they were going to head over to Cole’s school to see an art show where some of their friends’ work would be displayed. They wanted to know if we wanted to join them.
“Of course!” I said, as if this was a totally normal thing. It sounded great to me. Then Doug whispered to me, “They must like you. They never invite me to anything.” We went to the school together, and Ella—a gifted artist—expertly guided us through the exhibit. Lots of their friends were there, too, and we had fun mingling and making conversation with the students and their parents. Doug later joked that I got completely inundated with their lives that night, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I was hooked, and Cole and Ella reeled me in.
At the end of March 2014, I had two trips planned. One was to Mexico, where I was coordinating with senior officials in the fight against transnational criminal organizations and human traffickers. The other was to Italy, where Doug and I were looking forward to a romantic getaway. The respective itineraries were, in a word, different. At home, Doug and I stayed up late looking at pictures and guidebooks and planning our itinerary for Florence. At the office, I was working to put together and lead a bipartisan delegation of state attorneys general to join me in Mexico City.
Mexico-based transnational crime was—and is—a major threat, and California was a primary target. That March, my office had released a report that found, for example, that 70 percent of the U.S. supply of methamphetamine was coming through the San Diego port of entry on California’s southern border. The report also drew attention to ways in which Mexican-based drug trafficking was being amplified in the United States as cartels formed alliances with gangs on California streets and in California prisons.
The challenges posed to California law enforcement—and thereby the rest of the country—were significant, and I wanted to meet with Mexican officials to work through a joint plan to take on the cartels.
We spent three days in Mexico—four other state attorneys general and I—and were able to come away with a plan for concrete action. We signed a letter of intent with the National Banking and Securities Commission of Mexico to establish an anti-money-laundering enforcement effort. Money laundering fuels transnational criminal organizations, and by creating a communication and cooperation agreement with Mexico, we hoped to improve our ability to investigate and disrupt this financing.
On March 26, 2014, I arrived back at my apartment in San Francisco, feeling like the trip had been a real success. But it was late in the evening when I got home, and now I had a small problem: my trip with Doug was starting early the next morning, and I’d had no time to pack.
Shortly after I arrived at my apartment, Doug texted to say he was on his way from the airport. When he got to the apartment, I was in the middle of a frantic search. I couldn’t find my black pants, and I was intensely frustrated about it.
It was ridiculous, of course, but it was one of those moments when the balancing act caught up with me—a balancing act that many working women, and some men, know all too well. Just like my mother, I’ve internalized the idea that everything I do deserves 100 percent, but sometimes it feels like the numbers won’t work. There just isn’t enough of me to go around. This was one of those times. I had a hundred things racing through my mind in the aftermath of the Mexico trip, and a hundred more as I contemplated the work I’d missed while I was away. Meanwhile, I was trying to shift mental gears for a getaway with my sweetheart—but my packing list and my to-do list were competing hard for real estate in my brain. I was beating myself up for trying to do too much, even as I worried that I wasn’t doing quite enough, and all of this stress coalesced in the form of a search for my black pants.
Which I couldn’t find. My closet was a mess.
As a result, I was frazzled, and when Doug arrived he seemed out of sorts as well. He was acting strange—a little stiff, a little quiet.
“Do you mind if we get takeout instead of going out to eat?” I asked him. “I didn’t plan for this very well and I need time to pack.”
“Of course,” he said. “How about the Thai place we like?”
“Sounds great,” I replied. I rifled through a kitchen drawer and produced a tattered paper menu. “How about pad thai?”
Doug turned to me. “I want to spend my life with you.”
That was sweet, but he was always sweet like that. Truth be told, I didn’t register the significance of what he’d said at all. I didn’t even look up. My mind was still on the black pants.
“That’s nice, honey,” I said, rubbing his arm as I looked over the menu. “Should we have chicken or shrimp on the pad thai?”
“No, I want to spend my life with you,” he said again. When I looked up, he was getting down on one knee. He’d concocted an elaborate plan to propose to me in front of the Ponte Vecchio, in Florence. But once he had the ring, it was burning a hole in his pocket. He couldn’t keep it secret.
I looked at him there, on one knee, and burst into tears. Mind you, these were not graceful Hollywood tears streaming down a glistening cheek. No, I’m talking about snorting and grunting, with mascara smudging my face. Doug reached for my hand and I held my breath and smiled back. Then he asked me to marry him, and I bellowed a tear-soaked “Yes!”
Doug and I were married on Friday, August 22, 2014, in an intimate ceremony with the people we loved. Maya officiated; Meena read from Maya Angelou. In keeping with our respective Indian and Jewish heritage, I put a flower garland around Doug’s neck, and he stomped on a glass. And then it was done.
Cole, Ella, and I agreed that we didn’t like the term “stepmom.” Instead they call me their “Momala.”
One of my favorite routines is Sunday family dinner. This is a routine I instituted once Doug and I got engaged. When he and I first started dating, he was a single dad sharing custody with Kerstin. Family dinner had been Chinese takeout and plastic forks, which the kids spirited off to their bedrooms. I changed that. Now everyone knows that Sunday family dinner is nonnegotiable, that we come together, all of u
s around the table, relatives and friends always welcome, and I cook a meal for us to share. It’s really important to me.
Everyone quickly got into the routine and found their role to play. Cole sets the table, picks the music, and pitches in as sous chef in the kitchen. Ella makes restaurant-quality guacamole and exquisite desserts, including a gorgeous fresh fruit tart, where she folds the dough in magnificent ways, topped off with homemade whipped cream. Doug bought himself a pair of onion goggles, which he dons with great fanfare when it’s time to chop—and let me tell you, there is nothing more attractive than a man in onion goggles.
I make the main dish—maybe a rich pork stew or spaghetti Bolognese or an Indian biryani or chicken with feta cheese, lemon rind, and fresh oregano from the garden. Usually I’ll start cooking on Saturday, and sometimes even Friday, though if I’ve been on the road I’ll pull it all together quickly—something simpler, like fish tacos. It doesn’t always go as planned: sometimes the pizza dough doesn’t rise or the sauce won’t thicken or we’re missing a key ingredient and I have to improvise. That’s all okay. Sunday family dinner is about something more than the meal.
When dinner is finished, the kids do the dishes. I once told them the story of Uncle Freddy. Because he lived in a small basement apartment in Harlem with a tiny kitchen, Uncle Freddy would clean every single dish or utensil he used as soon as he was done using it. And in time, the kids turned “Uncle Freddy” into a verb. When it’s time to clean, they promise to “Uncle Freddy” the place. And they do a pretty good job!
I know that not everyone likes to cook, but it’s centering for me. And as long as I’m making Sunday family dinner, I know I’m in control of my life—doing something that matters for the people I love, so we can share that quality time together.
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Early one morning in that busy summer of 2014, my phone rang at the side of my bed. I picked it up to find Eric Holder, then the U.S. attorney general, on the other end of the line. He told me he had a question.