Twelve years after leaving the Bartlet White House, I am a 52-year-old, single father of two boys, ages 11 and 6.
I am also the newly elected President of the United States.
Today is Monday, January 21, 2019. Today, I will stand on a freezing cold dais and take the oath of office. To my eldest, Jonah, will go the honor of holding the Bible.
Today I find myself in a position I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined possible. When the Party came to me two years ago and asked if I was willing to run, I was the junior Senator from Connecticut, trying to balance the all-consuming demands of my job with the needs of a nine-year-old and a four-year-old; a delicate orchestration of personal and professional priorities that was difficult at best and nightmarish at its worst.
Standing on the pedestal of achievement and looking back, the past twenty years stretches out like an endless highway of sorrow and tragedy. So many burdens have shadowed my path to this place. I buried my sister, my father, my mother, my mentor, and my good friend: each more difficult than the thing before.
My father, my mother, Leo – they were all sudden, but not completely unexpected losses. My father had cancer; my mother did also. Leo had three heart attacks before the final one took him. Hard things, to be certain, but I learned it could always get worse.
I thought nothing could compare to the difficulty of telling CJ that her son's father had died of a massive heart attack while we were playing racquetball. I also thought nothing could compare to the responsibility of fulfilling my promise to be a father to his four-year-old son.
Then I had to tell my best friend that if he didn't get help for his substance abuse problem, he was no longer welcome in my family's life. I was forced to stand by and watch as the man I consider my brother chose the drugs over us.
I thought all of those things were difficult and painful until I had to bury my wife.
Donnatella was my soul mate.
Her doctor found the cancer a month after we learned she was pregnant again. Many long, tearful conversations followed until we both came to the realization the cancer had progressed too far, too fast and there was no feasible way to beat it. Donna's fiercest struggle became giving life to our unborn child.
It was a battle she would win, at the cost of her own life. Donna died on January 20, 2013, mere hours after giving birth to our son, Jacob by caesarean. She lived long enough to see him and hold him. My most treasured possession is the last photo taken of her, holding newborn Jacob with Jonah and I at her side.
We buried her on the 23rd of January in a small cemetery not far from the Hill, so the boys and I could visit frequently. On the 30th, after observing seven days of mourning, I returned to the Senate a widower with an infant and a kindergartner. My staff pulled together and transformed my office into Romper Room, with Miss Margaret firmly at the helm. People adjusted to the fact that I wasn't going to put my kids in daycare, much less able to with the hours I worked.
Jacob and Jonah were dragged from endless meeting to trivial event. By the time he was eight, Jonah was helping Margaret answer the phones after school. I became the champion of child-care advocates and single parents, the poster boy for balancing career and family.
When I wasn't being vilified by the Republican Party for exploiting my children for personal political gain.
CJ and I, already close after Toby's death, banded together and our kids became inseparable. Isaac and Jonah, only two months apart in age, became especially close. I took the three of them to temple on Saturdays before we'd gather CJ and have family day in a park somewhere or go to the movies. My boys began looking to CJ as a mother and Isaac turned to me to be his father. CJ and I consoled each other as friends, both of us knowing we'd likely never replace the ones we'd lost.
After the first anniversary of Donna's passing, CJ moved out of her apartment and into my four-bedroom brownstone. Isaac and Jonah had to share a room, but it was the best arrangement we could think of that didn't involve us hiring people to take care of our kids. Something we were both loath to do.
CJ's job as the public relations chief of Planned Parenthood of Washington, D.C. was flexible, allowing her to shuffle the older boys from school to sports practice to home or my office, depending on the day's schedule.
Jacob was a fixture on my hip. Fortunately, he was a very calm baby in the face of Senate votes and committee hearings. Cantankerous debates were at least held in civil tones in his tender-eared presence.
Such debates have been numerous over the past six years as this great country and its elected representatives have drifted aimlessly and desperately in search of a leader with purpose, morality and, perhaps a hint of hubris.
Looking at the field of viable candidates, the Democratic National Committee decided a fifty-ish Jewish widower with two kids was their best shot at retaking the presidency after twelve years. I reluctantly agreed to run against the sitting President, after CJ and Josiah Bartlet convinced me I could do more good in the White House than in the Senate.
My campaign strategy revolved around proving to the electorate what I had known for four years: the current President was woefully out of touch with the American public. While Congress was attempting to forestall an economic disaster and rebuild infrastructure devastated by corporate and government corruption, the Executive Branch was finding new and increasingly unconstitutional ways to limit our fundamental freedoms in the name of national security.
It was a vicious, mean-spirited campaign from the get-go. All of the thinly veiled insults and slurs came to a head in the midst of our last debate when, trailing miserably in every poll, the son-of-a-bitch went after my kids. I think the networks had to bleep out most of my expletive-ridden response.
When I hit the campaign trail again the next day, it became apparent voters agreed with the sentiments I so coarsely expressed and many of them heartily agreed with the venomous diatribe I had delivered.
CJ thought my defense of the children, though rude and obnoxious, probably sealed the election for me. I told CJ she could either take the rude part back or kiss her future job as my Chief of Staff goodbye.
Yesterday, we made our annual trip to the cemetery. Someone got the bright idea that chronicling my entire inauguration would make great television, so a camera crew from some network news magazine trailed us on this intensely private journey. The images they captured were run on every evening newscast: Jonah taking his brother's hand and the two of them following a step behind me to their mother's grave.
I knelt at Donna's headstone, unmindful of the camera crew hovering about and the snow clinging to my pants. My single white rose set at the base of the stone, I lifted my gloved hand to trace the engraved letters of her name. Donnatella Lyman. Wife, Mother, Friend and Soul Mate. Long Shall Your Spirit Linger With Those Who Treasured You in Life.
In the bitter cold, I couldn't feel the tears running down my cheeks. Jonah and Jacob placed their roses with mine. This year, as has happened every year before, Jonah stood stoically by my side whispering a prayer, while Jacob wrapped his arms around my neck and cried into my overcoat. Taking three stones from my pocket, I handed one to each child and we solemnly placed them atop the grave marker. Holding Jonah's hand and carrying Jacob, I trudged through the snow to the waiting car.