Mrs. Barack Obama Gives Herself An Early Mother's Day Gift
HER WALMART STOP CREATES BAD BUZZ
Michelle Robinson Obama, 43, never aspired to be someone standing in the unemployment line.
For years the 5'11 Chigago native wrestled with the issues that many professional women with families face: keep the job, or stay home with the babies and let brotherman do his thing.
While most African-American women don't have this dilemma, that work-family tug of war finally pulled in a direction that made Michelle say uncle.
When she finally winds down her duties as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals (she was promoted to the gig after Barack won his Senate seat), she said, it "will be the first time that I haven't gotten up and gone to a job."
"It's a bit disconcerting," Michelle said. "But it's not like I'll be bored."
Identity issues are something Obama has always confronted head-on: as a Black student at Princeton, then as an Ivy League-educated sister surrounded by White men, and now as the wife of a man audacious enough to become president of the United States in 2009.
On the campaign trail, she calls herself a mother, a citizen and a "professional."
"My view on this stuff is I'm just trying to be myself, trying to be as authentic as I can be. I can't pretend to be somebody else."
In conversations with her friends, the fitness addict has expressed some ambivalence about shedding her independent life. "It's a sacrifice for her to give that up," said Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the Obamas' and chair of the University of Chicago Medical Center Board, who said she and Michelle Obama discussed the decision as recently as last weekend, during a casual dinner at a neighbor's house.
"On the other hand," Jarrett said, laughing, "the opportunities she will have as first lady are great, too."
Michelle has no ready answer to the question of what she would do as first lady.
"Barack and I have lived very separate professional lives," she said. "He's done his thing, I do my thing. And my focus is on figuring out what's the right thing for me to do given where I am in my life, where my kids are. And I won't know what that looks like in '08 -- it changes," she said.
John Mottern / Washington Post
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