In the months before the inauguration, Michelle Obama began
describing her job as first lady as that of "mom in chief,"
a definition that indicated she would direct most of her
energy at ensuring daughters Sasha and Malia settle happily
into their new life in the White House and, over the next
four years, have a full complement of soccer games,
sleepovers and Miley Cyrus concerts.
Activist feminists, political rabble-rousers and media
busybodies read that description as a gentle letdown -- that
this Harvard-trained lawyer, former city government
bureaucrat and hospital executive would not be transforming
her East Wing office into an adjunct of the West. She would
not try to influence policy. She would not be controversial.
She would not be Hillary Clinton. If anything, she would be
more like Laura Bush.
But it turns out that Obama's definition of mom in chief was
broader, more complicated and more nuanced than most had
assumed. In her first year, she sketched out a job
description that had nurturing at its core. She would turn
parental mantras such as eat-your-vegetables and
go-out-and-play into policy initiatives on healthy eating
and exercise. At her behest, mentoring young Washington area
students became part of the daily responsibilities of senior
White House staff. Obama would offer tough love to students
in some of the capital's most underserved neighborhoods,
empathizing with their modest circumstances but still
putting the responsibility for success in their hands.
She began simply enough with the White House Kitchen Garden.
It was started with the help of fifth-graders from the
District's Bancroft Elementary School, in March 2009. It was
a symbolic gesture and one that made for pleasant,
controversy-free photographs. Sweet-faced children helped
the first lady -- dressed in a black tunic and matching
knee-high boots -- till a patch of earth on the South Lawn.
It was hard to argue against children and organic vegetables
-- although some people complained that after the cameras
disappeared, the first lady's staff was doing most of the
weeding and watering.
In many ways, the images of the first lady harvesting sweet
potatoes and pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with lettuce
replaced a host of stereotypes that had dogged her with one
of her own choosing. Instead of the "angry black woman"
finding fault with America, she appeared as a Whole Foods
version of Mother Earth. She shed the hyper-glamorous image
that had been foisted upon her by the fashion industry and
that she had encouraged by posing for a host of glossy
magazine covers. She may not have had dirt under her
manicured fingernails, but she at least got a little mud on
her knees.
The abundance that the garden produced -- more than 740
pounds of vegetables and herbs -- has been used to feed
everyone from the first family and White House guests to the
homeless who come to the meals program at D.C.'s Miriam's
Kitchen for sustenance. And the garden has resonated
internationally, with folks from London to Moscow curious
about how it was created, how the plants are faring and the
impact it might have on broader agricultural objectives such
as sustainable farming and organic production.
The garden was the beginning of the first lady's
wide-ranging program to curb childhood obesity, to change
the unhealthy eating habits of a nation and to connect all
of that to the notion that universal health care is the next
step in the civil rights movement. It would lead to health
fairs, including one in which Obama would spin a hula-hoop
around her waist for 142 revolutions. There would be a White
House Halloween party at which the first lady -- dressed as
a kitty cat -- handed out dried fruit as well as cookies and
M&Ms. And she would join forces with Big Bird of "Sesame
Street" to take the cause of good nutrition straight to kids
in their homes.
The garden would also further a dialogue about personal
responsibility that had begun a month earlier in Washington
and which Obama later took on the road to Denver. In March,
for Women's History Month, Obama gathered 21 accomplished
female actors, scientists, entrepreneurs and athletes at the
White House and had them fan out to local schools to talk to
students about how they could achieve beyond their wildest
dreams. Obama visited Anacostia High School, in one of
D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods, where she shared her life
story with students. She told them that she was not
exceptional. She didn't start with any high-powered
connections. No secret formulas for success.
"We didn't have a lot of money. I lived in the same house my
mother lives in now. . . . I went to public schools," she
said. "The fact is, I had somebody around me who helped me
understand hard work. I had parents who told me, 'Don't
worry about what other people say about you.' I worked
really hard. I did focus on school. I wanted an A. I wanted
to be smart. Kids would say: 'You talk funny.' 'You talk
like a white girl.' I didn't know what that meant."
Her comments resonated much further than that single
classroom. They would be mentioned again in June by Jasmine
Williams when the first lady delivered the graduation
address at Washington Mathematics Science Technology School,
the public charter high school where Williams was a senior.
Williams had pleaded with Obama to attend her commencement
exercises. And in her letter, Williams referred to Obama as
"first lady Michelle" -- a phrase that was a mixture of
respect and informality. Williams and the school's mostly
African American and Latino students said they found a
kinship in the stories Obama had repeated about being a
black girl from a working-class family in Chicago who wasn't
expected to achieve a fraction of what she has.
For Williams, the most memorable moment since Obama became
first lady was when Obama spoke to those students in
Anacostia. "She told them how a lot of people told her she
spoke like a white girl." Williams said she, too, refuses to
buy into the idea that black students are incapable of
eloquence, of debate-quality erudition, of confident
personal expression.
As Williams and the other graduating seniors stepped on
stage, one by one, to receive their diplomas, Obama, smiling
brightly, embraced each student for a commemorative
photograph that would no doubt find its way onto a mantel or
a boast wall. As one young woman paused to have her picture
taken, she took the opportunity to throw her hand up with
fingers raised in a sign of victory or peace or just plain
tough-girl cool. The student was smirking rather than
smiling. Her head was tossed back and her torso tilted to
the side in a manner that was all bravado and superiority.
The first lady seemed to recognize the damage all that
adolescent bluster could do. So with her left arm still
loosely encircling the student's shoulders, she used her
right hand to gently pull the girl's hand down, drawing it
in toward the child's heart, all the while hugging her even
tighter. In a matter of seconds, the girl's body language
lost its tense swagger. Her smirk turned into a wide-eyed grin.
With this mom in chief's protective, admonishing and
encouraging gesture, a young woman transformed -- at least
for a moment. A student who had been putting on defensive
airs became a graduate with an open smile -- one that spoke
of endless possibility rather than inevitable limits.