When Chelsea Clinton finished the Boston Marathon on Monday, I had a surprising (to me) reaction.

Something like pride, I suppose. Though I played no role in her run. Something like joy, I suppose. Though that doesn’t quite capture it. Something like satisfaction. Though that's not quite sufficient.

I’ll start here: My grandmother loved the Kennedy family.

Not necessarily the family's politics, although she may have. I never heard her talk politics. She lived in Burtonsville, Maryland, and I grew up in suburban Chicago and I don’t recall a lot of current events being discussed when we visited. But when we walked into her kitchen every summer, two things were a given: She had just made cookies, and there was a new Kennedy decorative plate hanging on the wall.

JFK and Jackie perched elegantly on a wingback chair. Jackie on her wedding day. Jackie looking pensive and beautiful in pearls. JFK and Jackie holding John and Caroline’s little hands. All of their glamor and promise, rendered in porcelain paint and suspended in time. Those plates may have been the only thing my grandmother splurged on.

Later, when she was alone and her health was fading, my grandmother came to live with my parents. In 2005, we brought her to the Field Museum to see “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years,” an exhibit that included Jackie’s clothing and accessories from state events.

I was pregnant with my daughter at the time. I remember wondering if my grandmother was happy at that moment. I remember wondering what she revered in Jackie, associated with Jackie, loved about Jackie.

The Kennedys’ grip on the public imagination may never be replicated or, for that matter, released.

“Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” just hit 65 million hours streamed on Hulu and Disney+, making it FX's most-watched limited series ever. TikTok searches for JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette both grew by 9,100% after the series premiered, according to Deadline.

We remain enchanted. And by we, I mean a bunch of people. For some reason the Kennedys’ grip has mostly eluded me.

I have deep respect for the policies and causes the family championed and continues to champion. (Well, not the wayward nephew currently wreaking havoc on our vaccine schedules.) I feel sorrow for their tremendous, relentless losses. I’m grateful for their generosity and their service. But all of it feels a little distant and unrelatable.

Michelle Obama was the first first lady whose books I devoured, whose talks I attended, whose quotes I scribbled down, whose approach to motherhood, career, power, community, advocacy, felt like something I could learn from and borrow from.

But Michelle Obama wasn’t my first White House exemplar. Long before she moved in, there was Chelsea Clinton.

A month shy of her 13th birthday when her father, Bill Clinton, was sworn into office, Chelsea spent her teenage years in the White House. I can’t imagine one minute of it was easy.

She was mercilessly mocked by everyone from Rush Limbaugh to “Saturday Night Live” for her curly hair (girl, same) and braces. Sad, embarrassing grown-ups punched down at her for years, turning her childhood into a master class in smiling through the pain.

She endured breathless, around-the-clock speculation about her family that was both meaner and more omnipresent than coverage of previous administrations, in part because of the meteoric rise of 24/7 news outlets in the ’90s and in part because her parents were scandal magnets.

Her dad did her no favors, plunging his family, his presidency and his country into disarray with his Monica Lewinsky affair — a betrayal that must have felt uniquely painful for a daughter not much younger than the chosen object of her father’s attention. (Affection feels too tender for that ordeal.)

Her mother, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been mocked and threatened and blamed for things that range from patently ridiculous (Pizzagate!) to plainly not her fault (aforementioned affair). When her mother ran for president, arenas full of people chanted “lock her up!”

And yet.

Not once have I read about Chelsea Clinton being anything but kind. Thoughtful. Gracious. Loving toward her parents. Magnanimous toward her tormentors. Protective of the first children successors. (She has vehemently and unwaveringly defended Barron Trump’s right to privacy over the years.)

“To retaliate with crass language or insult someone personally — I just don't think I’m built that way,” she once told The Guardian.

So when I read that Chelsea Clinton had just completed Boston, something inside of me lit up. I think it was delight. Delight in watching this brilliant, beleaguered figure, this mainstay of my youth, this model of quiet, unflappable composure just keep absolutely slaying at life.

She has a B.A. in history from Stanford University, a Master of Public Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health (where she also teaches), and both a Master of Philosophy and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University. She is the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation and a mother of three.

It’s not surprising, I suppose, that she’d excel at a feat of endurance and grit and at pushing through pain.

This was her seventh marathon. It was also her personal best. She finished in 3 hours, 40 minutes and 52 seconds, which qualifies her for the 2027 Boston Marathon.

She reportedly registered under the pseudonym Margaret Smith and was accompanied by police escorts throughout the race. Her parents greeted her at the finish line, placing medals around her neck and the necks of the officers who ran alongside her.

I’ve crossed a marathon finish line. It has a way of surfacing a lifetime of moments and memories and mistakes and milestones. Whatever we think we witnessed in that Clinton family medal ceremony, I imagine it was more complicated and gratifying and messy and beautiful than anything we can conjure.

I don’t know what Jackie Kennedy stirred and inspired in my grandmother. I wish I had had the wisdom and the vocabulary to ask her before she died.

But I know what it’s like to look in the most unlikely, unrelatable place — the White House — and see a supporting character you revere. Someone you’re cheering for. Someone that represents the best of us, in a place that sometimes witnesses the worst of us.

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