Regarding Mary Toutonghi's recollection about Ann and Barry in Seattle in 1962:
Toutonghi was living in Seattle at the time, in the early 1960s. Her husband was going to school at Seattle University, and she was a stay-at-home mom with their 18-month-old daughter.
They lived in a three-story house that had been converted into three inexpensive apartments. Toutonghi and her family lived in the basement apartment, and Ann Dunham — Obama’s mother — lived in the apartment directly upstairs.
Dunham attended night classes a few days a week at the University of Washington, and needed someone to take care of her son.
snip
“I remember his being very large and very curious and very alert. I don’t remember him fussing, but that doesn’t mean anything. Saying he never fussed is like saying he’s not real. But I don’t remember any undue fussing at all,” she said.
Being a struggling young mother herself, in the tumultuous dawning of the 1960s, no less, Toutonghi said she doesn’t remember many specifics about Dunham.
“I was so engrossed in myself at the time,” she said.
But the circumstances of a young mother living, attending school and raising a baby alone stuck in Toutonghi’s mind.
“It was a tough situation, as far as I knew,” she said. “She was 19, she’d promised her parents that she was going to finish college, even through she’d married. I’m presuming her parents were paying for the schooling — nobody had any money at the time.”
snip
Dunham left school to take care of the baby, and returned to Seattle while Obama Sr. finished college in Hawaii and left for graduate school at Harvard University.
“It was interesting, and I don’t know why she was going to school in Seattle and he was in Hawaii at the time. She had told me at one point that because of her husband’s post in the tribe he was going to have to go back to Kenya and marry a black woman, as well. It was a whole different world, so she was accepting of that and hoping she could get back to him soon,” Toutonghi said.
http://redoubtreporter.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-baby-sitter-awaits-new-era.html
The part in bold above is just bizarre -- very few American women would put up with that.
Why was Ann raising a newborn infant in Seattle by herself while her husband was at school in Hawaii and her parents were living in Hawaii?
Can anyone offer a plausible explanation for that? Very strange.
It's not hard. She probably didn't want to be near her parents, who dissaproved of her marriage, and things probably weren't all that great with her hubby needed some time away from him.
Perhaps she was holding out some childish hope that he would change his mind about going back to Africa to marry a black woman, and she would then go back to him in Hawaii and all would live happily ever after. That would account for her friend's comments.