PROMISE

As They Move Into White House, First Daughters' Obituaries Are Written

WORDS ARE INSUFFICIENT TO CAPTURE THE EUPHORIA AND HOPE that sweep America and much of the world today as Barack Obama gets sworn in as the U.S’s 44th president. I am not going to even try; I’ll leave that task to the reporters-of-record.

Rather, my mind is on two little girls who move into the White House today under the shadow of their father.

Can Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, comprehend at their tender ages that the first lines of their obituaries are already written? “Daughter of the first African-American president.”

The spotlight will put immense pressure on them to acquiesce to our projections. Already the pundits posit them as “fashion icons,” toy trendsetters and “new heights of cuteness" among Presidents’ children. And they haven’t even moved in yet!

Fame has a way of reflecting what we want to see in celebrities, forgetting the complexity of the persons behind the images, exalting but also imprisoning.

Yet in a column in the Wall Street Journal today, Jenna and Barbara Bush, twin daughters of George W. and Barbara Bush, give advice to the Obama girls, recount their own times as the daughters and granddaughters of Presidents, and said of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., “there is no doubt that it is a magical place at any age.”

Susan Eisenhower, daughter of President Dwight Eisenhower concurs. “It’s like a dream," Eisenhauer told SKYNews. Malia and Sasha’s lives “will never, ever be the same again. There are very few presidential families in the country so it comes with a great deal of ongoing responsibility, and I don't think those young girls have any idea of what is going to happen to them."

Here’s my wish that they grow up to become whom they choose to be, free from our demands that they fulfill our fantasies.