I remember the summer of 2012, during a family barbecue. I watched as my two nieces, one black, one white, played in our yard. They were kindergartners then, and had just learned how to high-five.
With each successful slap of their palms, one would yell out, “We’re superheroes!” and the other would respond, “Just like Michelle Obama! Just like the president’s wife!”
I am sure I’m not the only person who has a sappy story like this, about children’s love for the first lady. Indeed, last night, when she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, she was preceded by a video montage intercut with children explaining what she means to them. My cynical heart wanted to dismiss this as political theater but I still cried, a bit, when a boy looked into the camera and said that he grew up without his mom, and the first lady is “someone we could look up to.”
And then, there she was, the actual first lady, not a montage. As she spoke, the auditorium fell silent for the first time that night. “With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us,” she said. “And let me tell you, Barack and I take that same approach to our jobs as president and first lady because we know that our words and actions matter, not just to our girls, but the children across this country, kids who tell us, ‘I saw you on TV, I wrote a report on you for school.’ ”
Like many women, I imagine, sometimes when I’m online I will find myself looking at pictures of Michelle Obama and her family. I admire their clothes and their poise and their effortlessness. When I’m depressed or stressed about something, I rewatch her “Billy on the Street” appearance to make me laugh. I reread an interview with Toni Morrisonin which she says, “Michelle is the biggest brain in the country.” I imagine what that must be like — to be that smart, to be that emotionally attuned, and always aware of our gaze.
I watch her, with avid eyes, and even as I do, I am afraid of my own avidity, of all of ours. These past eight years has been a time of watching her with my heart in my throat. I read the news and I am afraid of how quickly in this country admiration — especially for women, especially for women with big brains and hearts, especially for black women who have both — how quickly admiration can curdle into ridicule.
It is a fine, fine line to walk. I watched Hillary Clinton walk a version of it when I was young. I thought a first lady who quotes African proverbs, who says, “It takes a village,” has to understand me and the struggles of my family, and then I became, as the years went by, disillusioned. Twenty-four years ago, I was so unabashedly excited for Mrs. Clinton to be first lady that my sisters and I stayed up late to watch her at the convention. We made a Hillary Clinton button for our cat. I don’t know that as an adult I will recapture that kind of blind devotion to a public figure, and I would argue, that’s what growing older and asking questions is all about.
But Mrs. Obama, somehow, is different. I watched her stand on stage (“I think she’s in body armor,” a friend posted to Facebook) and saw how underneath the glare of the lights she didn’t blink.
“That is the story of this country,” she said, “the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.”
She said this line, knowing it would be dissected and pilloried by many the next morning. But she said it, calmly, knowing it was the truth. I think that’s why some of us watch her so closely. We want to figure out how to get to where she stands.
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