Interview with the First Lady

4 minute read
Nancy Gibbs and Michael Scherer

Michelle Obama hasn’t found the time to fill the bookshelves in her East Wing office yet. But she spent nearly an hour in early May with TIME’s Michael Scherer and Nancy Gibbs to discuss her first few months as one of the world’s most watched women. Some excerpts:

ON HER CHILDHOOD We were so blessed, my brother and I, because we had everything you needed. It had nothing to do with money, but we had two parents who loved us, a father that had a steady job all of his life. We had a strong external-family unit. I grew up with grandparents and uncles and aunts. People didn’t go to college, but you had Christmas dinner together. The neighborhood that I lived in wasn’t wealthy, but it wasn’t crime-ridden, so you could play in the streets. And there were gangs, but there weren’t gangs that would keep you from going to school.

ON RAISING KIDS IN THE WHITE HOUSE We stay 100% in their world all the time. And I don’t know if you understand that, but their lives are very disconnected from this [place]. You can do that with kids when they are young, because they just don’t care.

ON THE NEW HOUSE It has been the greatest single benefit of this for us as a family. It means that we see each other every day. And that hasn’t happened for most of the kids’ lifetime. It’s rare to have Dad at home for dinner, to see him in the mornings, to have him there when you go to bed at night, just to be able to have the casual conversations that happen about life at dinnertime. That’s been terrific. It’s normal. It’s more normal than we’ve had for a very long time.

ON STRESS I figure I can turn it off. He can’t. And knowing that he can’t–that there probably isn’t a minute that goes by that he’s not worrying, thinking, dealing, mulling something around in his head, that there’s no real time that he can be down, and just knowing how stressful that is on a person–that’s a tough thing to watch. But he handles it so well that he even gives me a sense of calm.

ON BEING A ROLE MODEL There are thousands of Michelle and Barack Obamas all over this nation. That is true. I know them. I’ve gone to school with them. I live with them. There are thousands of role models like me. I just happen to be the First Lady.

ON ADVICE FROM FORMER FIRST LADIES The most unexpected and uniform advice that I got was, Go to Camp David early and often. It’s one place you can go where you feel some level of freedom and an ability to breathe. I think every single First Lady felt that was an important resource, an important opportunity, an important thing for the health of the family.

ON WOMEN’S CHOICES Find your space. Find your spot. Wear what you love. Choose the careers that may have meaning to you, because there’s always somebody who will say, “I wouldn’t have worn that color,” or “Why didn’t you work at that job?” But if you’re comfortable in the choice and it resonates with you, then all that other stuff–it’s just conversation. People have the right to have conversations. But I think that’s one thing we as women sometimes do–we don’t make choices that have meaning to us. And then when those things fall apart, you have to have yourself to fall back on.

ON THOSE WHO SAY SHE IS SACRIFICING FOR HER HUSBAND Those conversations had nothing to do with me. A lot of times, women feel like they give up so much in comparison to their partner, or in life, for whatever. I don’t look at doors closing. If I thought that I’d be shortchanged in any way, and if [Barack] thought I’d be shortchanged in any way, we wouldn’t have done this.

ON WHAT COMES NEXT I’m 45 years old. When this is over and my kids are grown … I’ll still be in the prime of my professional life, as far as I see it. If I’m alive and work till I’m 80, that’s a lot of good years of doing a whole bunch of things that sort of fit into my particular line of work. And I don’t even know what that is yet.

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