First Daughter/Only Daughter

I recently picked up Peter Slevin's biography of U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama (now in paperback).

As I was idly flipping through the pages, my eye fell on this sentence: "Michelle gave birth to Malia Ann Obama, their first daughter, on July 4, 1998."

Holy crap. That gave me pause. How did I not realize this before?

I knew Malia was graduating from high school this year. Her father talks about it often. (I recently heard that he has declined an invitation to address Malia's class's graduation ceremony, saying he knows he's going to be too emotional that day. Understandable that he'd want to just be one of the dads that day.) 

For some reason -- perhaps because I'd never seen Malia's birthdate before, perhaps because I've been mentally blocking it?? -- I just never put two and two together -- i.e., that she & Katie would be exactly the same age. I lost Katie in early August 1998, almost exactly a month after Malia was born.

In a way, I am glad I didn't figure this out earlier. The last seven years would have been tougher if I knew there was a yardstick in the White House, telling me just how big Katie might have been now, when she might have gotten her driver's license, what she might have been wearing, (how many times she rolled her eyes at her father, lol), etc.

Now I just have to get through the rest of this school year -- prom, graduation & off-to-college season. The President (who is, for the record, exactly the same age as I am, albeit I was born in January and he was born in August) probably won't be the only one emotional about what his oldest daughter is up to, albeit for somewhat different reasons. :(