Michelle Obama watched an Oprah rerun in her hotel room Monday, hours before her big speech.
The “Cosby Show” cast had reunited to discuss how their sitcom gave the country its first glimpse at an educated, career-oriented black mom.
“Americans didn’t believe there were black families with two professionals,” she says. “Sometimes, I feel that people don’t believe I exist.”
After her speech, it would be tough not to believe in the authenticity of Michelle Obama. And after talking with her the next morning, I’m struck by how far we’ve come since 1992 when Hillary Rodham Clinton dissed half the women in America by saying, “You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies.”
Obama gets the complicated tug between job and family, the ache of spending most of your days away from your kids.
While her own mom has said, “I got to stay home with my children,” the Princeton and Harvard grad made a very different choice.
“Initially, I had to go to work,” she said of the corporate law job she took to pay off college and law school loans.
“You were being offered a job that’s double what your parents ever made, and you have all that debt. So you take the job,” she said. “I didn’t know that I’d get there and feel empty.”
Obama switched to community outreach work, became a mom and tried cutting her hours to spend more time with her daughters.
“Part-time is a scam,” she said about the challenges of finding half-time child care and fully performing on the job.
I recognize, of course, that it was no coincidence — hours before Clinton’s speech on Tuesday — that the Obama campaign served up to a small group of female columnists the candidate’s wife who blows away even TV’s Clair Huxtable.
But that didn’t diminish her raw candor when she brought up a problem faced by all working moms I know, even if pride or feminism keeps them from admitting it.
“Guilt.
“I feel it every day I miss out on time with my girls.
“I fully understand a person’s decision to walk away from career and money to take care of kids. And I understand a person who says, ‘My God, if I were home with kids all day I’d die.’
“I have felt both things,” she continued. “Women have moved to the next level, but we’re still caught.”
Some might hear her comments as mere spin scripted to lure women voters and preempt a cookie-baking debacle. But as a mom who works outside the home — and loves it — I know Michelle Obama’s ambivalence to be true.
Much has been said about her speech this week — her PR redemption, her girls, even her turquoise dress. But there was one moment that stood out.
It’s when she recalled, after she gave birth to their first daughter, her husband driving home from the hospital “inching along at a snail’s pace, peering at us anxiously through the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands.”
Any new parent has felt that sense of joy and responsibility and knows that the real work lasts long after the first car ride home.
Barack Obama accepts the Democrats’ nomination tonight to take the driver’s seat of our country. He seeks to carry the weight of our future in his hands. His hardest work, millions hope, starts Jan. 20.
To echo the words of his straight-shooting wife backstage before his debut at the 2004 convention: “Just don’t screw it up, buddy.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
