I now see that is a woman's God-given role to tend to the home and take care of the children: it's just that the entire planet is our home, and every child on it is one of our children.

She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.

I'll be a wife and mother first, then First Lady.

In the fields of southwest Iowa, my parents and grandparents worked and sacrificed. Like so many Iowans, the American Dream for them was never about wealth or fame. Their dream was to leave their children and grandchildren a better life, with greater opportunity, than their own.

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.