Interview with the First Lady

(4 of 7)

I know you talked to a lot of your predecessors, the only people who know what it's like to experience what you're ...
Yes.

Related

Photos

Behind the Scenes with Michelle Obama

Photos

Michelle Obama's Style Evolution

Photos

Behind the Scenes with Obama

What was the most unexpected advice you got?
Well, the most unexpected and uniform advice that I got was, Go to Camp David early and often — universally, across the spectrum.

And what's that about?
It's just one place you can go where you're completely ... where you feel some level of freedom and an ability to breathe. I think every single First Lady felt that that was an important resource, an important opportunity, an important thing for the health of the family. And some found it later in their terms than others, because you get so busy. I mean, even ... you know, we don't use it as much primarily because kids have their lives here.

There's soccer games.
Right, they've got games. And then there's the birthday party, and then you, you know — "I don't want to go up there" and so ... but we use it as much as we can.

The other thing I think is that there is, I think there's a real camaraderie among First Ladies that I sense, just the willingness and openness of each and every one of them, just the sense of "I know what you're about to go through and I'm with you." I don't care ... "I know what you're going through." And I've gotten wonderful letters and phone calls and invitations to lunch, and it's just from every single former First Lady who is alive and can breathe — they've reached out. And my sense is that it's not just me; I think they do this because they know, experience when you've got children, that you need support. And that's very cool, I'd say.

Have you felt like you can breathe in this building since you've been here?
Yes.

I mean, what have been the pressures, the constrictions?
You know, one small example: I get so comfortable here that I forget that there are thousands of people coming in and out, right? So I'm walking Bo out here, and I'm like, O.K., let me take him out so I can eat lunch, and I come here for the interview. And we happen to walk past the gate where the visitors were coming, and I heard this "Yeaaaa! It's Bo!" [Laughter.] And ... what is that? [Laughter.] Oh, shoot. [Laughter.] Oh, I went by the Visitors Gate. Bo is like, Who's calling me? [Laughter.] And you just forget. I was like, Oh, darn, I should have gone around the other way. So I'm like, "Hey!" [Laughter.]

But on the one hand, I forgot, you know. Usually I walk out, walk Bo, usually no one is screaming, or whatever. So there are just ways that you can either be in the midst of all the excitement, and there are many ways you can avoid it. And the longer you're around, you learn all the little channels of sort of, Oh, I'm not going in that door, not right now. [Laughter.]

So the constraints of this place with kids ... I think it lessens it, because there are things that I have to do. There's a soccer game on — there's soccer on Saturdays. And we went in Chicago. We go to all their games — or I do, at least. So that makes you get out and be normal. There's parent-teacher conference, there's the play, there's the concert, there's the birthday party. You want to meet the person who's going to ... your kid is going to sleep over with. They want friends over, so you're arranging to make that happen. Kids force you into a normalcy that ... you know, it even trumps this in some ways.

Do you find the other parents are giving you a little ... like can you sit in your lawn chair at the soccer game and not be ...
The more I go, the more I can, right? The more often — and I found this even in Chicago during the campaign. People eventually get used to you, no matter who you are. If I went out there once in a while, I think there would be a ton of excitement because everybody feels like, Well, this is the opportunity. But if people know I'm out there every Saturday, what you get is more of the normal kind of — I'm sitting down, somebody may come over and sit and we strike up a conversation. There isn't a frenzy because, you know, you're out there with everybody else.

And that's something I discovered over the course of the campaign. You can push through normalcy. People will be excited for a short period of time, and then it's like, Oh, yes, it's just Malia's mom here. She comes here every Saturday: "Hey, how you doing? It's good to see you again." And you're trying to watch the game. So we just keep doing it.

How do you walk that line for them? It's different for you as an adult, but for your girls, they could be the ultimate role models too, which would be an enormous burden to ... except it sort of comes with the fact that they are the most ... they are the children in the world that people are most interested in. So how do you help them walk the line of normal vs. the position they're in?
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. And it's ... you can do that with kids when they're young because they just don't care. [Laughter.]

It's normal that Alicia Keyes came for dinner. [Laughter.] Because they were there that night, right?
Yes. Yes. It becomes "normal." But they're not going down to dinner all the time, meeting people, either. That becomes as much of a special occasion for them as it is for any other girl, because they're not ... if they had something to do, they might have missed that event. So we really keep it very separate.

And people have been very respectful of that. And that helps, because you can only do — we're only as successful at it as people allow us to be.

See pictures of Malia and Sasha's Inauguration adventure.

See pictures of the Obamas in Europe.