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The New First Family
Sleepovers coming to the White House

By JODI KANTOR, New York Times
November 6, 2008

When Verna Williams called to congratulate Michelle Obama on Wednesday morning, she half-jokingly offered to stop calling her old law school buddy "Meesh" and start calling her "Mrs. Obama."

Michelle Obama, the soon-to-be First Lady, dissolved into giggles and countered with a few title ideas of her own -- ones too silly to mention to a newspaper reporter, Williams said.

One day after the presidential election, the Obama family of Chicago's Hyde Park is only beginning to figure out how to become the first family of the United States.
As the first black president and his family, they will be a living tableau of racial progress, and friends say they are acutely aware that everything they say and do -- the way they dress, where Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, go to school, even what kind of puppy they adopt -- will brim with symbolic value.

"Here's an intact black family, a happy family, with beautiful kids and a loving extended family," Williams said, "and they happen to live in the executive mansion."
For President-elect Barack Obama and his family, leaving Chicago means dismantling the protective cocoon they have built around them.

Throughout the campaign, Malia and Sasha, who will become the youngest White House occupants in decades, spent many hours in their grandmother's tiny South Side apartment, in the same building where their mother was raised. Their private school at the University of Chicago is laced with neighbors and allies who watch over the girls with loving vigilance.

When the girls and their mother have needed an escape, they could retreat to the backyards of longtime friends, where they jumped rope or turned up the volume on their iPods and danced with abandon to songs by Soulja Boy and Beyonce. Michelle Obama, a creature of the South Side and of habit, has spent nearly every Saturday for the past 10 years with the same two friends and their collective brood of children.

Now, all of that must change.

On Wednesday afternoon, Michelle Obama spoke with First Lady Laura Bush, who invited her and her daughters to visit the White House soon. The hunt for a new school begins now, Michelle Obama told friends Wednesday. In Hyde Park, she has a reputation as a fiercely attentive mother, one who watches Malia's footwork closely at soccer games while other parents drift and gossip over coffee. Friends say she will apply the same scrutiny to her daughters' transition to Washington.

"Because she is Michelle, she will manage that, she will direct it," said Sandra Matthews, instead of relying on others to research schools.

As parents, the Obamas believe in giving their daughters some sway over decisions that affect them, she said. And so, note to headmasters: The preferences of Malia (pronounced mah-LEE-ah), a solemn-eyed Harry Potter fan, and Sasha, the family ham, could weigh heavily. (Although the Obamas could send their daughters to one of the capital's public schools, many Washingtonians expect them to look closely at Georgetown Day School or Sidwell Friends, which Chelsea Clinton attended.)

While the Obama White House will surely entertain the usual dignitaries and heads of state, the most prized guests might be the girls' friends. "We may see sleepovers at the White House, groups of young girls in their sleeping bags hanging out with Sasha and Malia," Williams said.

'Come join us'

Instead of trying to create an entirely new social world in Washington, friends predict that the Obamas will transport some of their Hyde Park world to the capital. On the campaign trail, they were accompanied by bands of relatives and friends. In part so the Obama girls could have familiar playmates, everyone brought their families along too.

The attitude of the Obamas is "come join us on this adventure," said John Rogers, a finance company founder who has done so a few times.

The Obamas will come to Washington with a fifth family member, one who has so far remained mostly out of the spotlight. Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother, is a widow and retired bank secretary who has served as the girls' chief caretaker during their mother's frequent absences. Aides say they do not yet know whether Robinson will formally move into the White House, but it is certain that Malia and Sasha's grandmother will be near at hand and available when their parents have to travel.

"They are extremely close to their grandmother," Matthews said. "That's why Michelle has been able, with the ease and peace of mind, to be gone."

Once Michelle Obama has settled her girls, she has said, she will move on to the matter of exactly what sort of first lady she wants to be. Although she dresses with unusual care -- in both designer clothing and the off-the-rack styles she has become known for -- friends say she has only a certain amount of patience for the domestic arts. She is a get-it-done-efficiently Rachael Ray type, they say, not given to elaborate Martha Stewart-like efforts.

As first lady, Michelle Obama has said, she plans to make herself an advocate for working parents, particularly military families, urging better access to child care for all. As a first lady trying to juggle public duties with two young children, she will be a living illustration of the very issue she describes.

"She's going to be engaging in the balancing act herself," said Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian.

But in one respect, the Obamas' family life will now become much easier. Since 1996, when he was elected to the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has spent long periods away from home, and by his own admission, he is a part-time parent at best. The last six years have been a particularly punishing set of marathons, as he ran for a U.S. Senate seat, then spent weekdays in Washington, then traveled on the presidential campaign trail for nearly two long years.

His election will help realize a long-held, cherished family dream: For the next four years, the Obamas will finally eat dinner together.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

6 de novembro de 2008 às 08:41

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