Word: fatherness
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...Obama's father had an agenda: to return to his home country and help reinvent Kenya. He wanted to take his new family with him. But he also had a wife from a previous marriage there-a marriage that may or may not have been legal. In the end, Ann decided not to follow him. "She was under no illusions," says Abercrombie. "He was a man of his time, from a very patriarchal society." Ann filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964, citing "grievous mental suffering"-the reason given in most divorces at the time. Obama Sr. signed...
...married an African, had their baby and gotten divorced. At this juncture, her life could have become narrower-a young, marginalized woman focused on paying the rent and raising a child on her own. She could have filled her son's head with well-founded resentment for his absent father. But that is not what happened...
...meantime, she met another foreign student, Lolo Soetoro, at the University of Hawaii. ("It's where I send all my single girlfriends," jokes her daughter Soetoro-Ng, who also married a man she met there.) He was easygoing, happily devoting hours to playing chess with Ann's father and wrestling with her young son. Lolo proposed...
...husband visited Hawaii frequently, but they never lived together again. Ann filed for divorce in 1980. As with Obama's father, she kept in regular contact with Lolo and did not pursue alimony or child support, according to divorce records...
...Before her death, Ann read a draft of her son's memoir, which is almost entirely about his father. Some of her friends were surprised at the focus, but she didn't seem obviously bothered. "She never complained about it," says Peluso. "She just said it was something he had to work out." Neither Ann nor her son knew how little time they had left...