'First grandmother' will continue to play key role for Sasha, Malia
Michelle Obama has said her main job in the White House will be "mom-in-chief.''
But she's sure to get some help from her own mom, Marian Robinson, a 71-year-old former secretary who Michelle Obama says she is "begging" to come to Washington.
(AP)
Whether Robinson would live at the White House or elsewhere in Washington is unclear.
"The White House reminds me of a museum," Robinson recently told a magazine interviewer. "How do you sleep in a museum?"
Robinson, along with her now-deceased husband, Fraser, raised Michelle and Michelle's older brother, Craig, in a South Shore apartment on the top floor of a Chicago brick bungalow. Fraser Robinson, a Chicago Water Department foreman, died in 1991 from complications related to multiple sclerosis.
Craig Robinson, now the men's basketball coach at Oregon State University, calls his mother "our family's anchor."
"The sole reason Michelle was willing to campaign at all was because she knows that Mom is there to help take care of the girls,'' Craig said at the Democratic National Convention.
Indeed, even before Barack Obama ran for president, Marian Robinson was helping her daughter balance the demands of career and motherhood: She picked up the Obama daughters, 7-year-old Sasha and 10-year-old Malia, from the University of Chicago Lab School and drove them to afternoon activities such as dance classes, piano lessons and play dates. When Barack and Michelle Obama were off campaigning, Marian Robinson often was their caregiver.
It's a role she seems to relish, though not one she apparently intended.
When her own two children were young, she tried to set an example.
"I told my kids, 'You see what I'm doing? I'm raising my kids, so when you have some kids, you better be sure to raise them yourself,'" Marian Robinson told People magazine. "But when Barack got in this race, then Michelle was going to start to go out and campaign. I was already picking the girls up from school. So I thought, well, maybe Michelle could use me, so I went on and retired last year."
Robinson and her daughter appear to be very close, with an easy relationship. When an interviewer recently asked Michelle about her mother waffling about moving into the White House, the daughter chuckled, saying, "Yeah, whatever.''
At the convention, Michelle Obama spoke about her father mostly, how he had remained devoted to their family and continued to work even as his condition made it increasingly painful to move. But Michelle Obama said her mother's love "has always been a sustaining force for our family.''
"One of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters,'' the soon-to-be first lady said.
Marian Robinson narrated a film that preceded her daughter's address to the convention, a film filled with photos of the Robinson family as Michelle was growing up.
"When she was young, I remember how she would look up to us. Now, I look up to her,'' said the mother. "She is the most remarkable person I know. I wish my husband could see this day, but every day I get to see a piece of him in her. And for that, I am so proud and so blessed."
Michelle Obama expects her mother to continue to be a big part of the Obama house, no matter where that house is.
"The girls are going to need her, as part of their sense of stability,'' Michelle Obama told Newsweek. "And what is true for my mom is that she does anything for us and her grandkids. All they have to do is look at her with sad eyes, and she's done for.''