- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 29
-
Sparkle (0)
When I heard that Marion Robinson, First Lady Michelle Obama's mother, would join the first family in Washington, D.C., and live at the White House to help her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia, adjust to life as first kids, I thought how sweet. I also wrote about it at WSATA. Nothing at all about Robinson's final decision to go to the White House struck me as odd, a grandmother choosing to be around her grandchildren or helping to care for them regularly.
Her possible move with the First Family seemed an obvious and ordinary decision to me because I wasn't carted off to daycare when I was little. My grandmother didn't live with my parents, but I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house. My mother had the benefit of my grandmother keeping me while she went to work, and I count that as a blessing, one I wish my own children had experienced.
My grandmother was a natural caregiver, a nurturer and consistent disciplinarian. With my grandfather, she not only raised five children of her own, all of whom finished college during a period when African Americans usually did not attend universities, but she also raised foster children. In many ways she was the stereotypical grandmother, preparing huge Sunday dinners to which we all looked forward and maintaining a sanctuary upon which the entire family converged for holidays
While I'm speaking of my grandmother, let me get this off my chest. I was my grandmother's favorite! Hear that, cousins, and you too, baby brother, should you come across this post. ;-) I was MaDear's number one! Did she ever bring a three-layer, valentine-shaped cake with pink frosting that she made from scratch to school for your birthdays, hmm? I don't think so.
Back to the Obamas: I've been a little suprised that Marion Robinson moving in to help her daughter and son-in-law, President Barack Obama, with Sasha and Malia would be controversial. From all I've read, Grandmother Robinson was the after-school care provider for Sasha and Malia and a rock for the Obama family long before the president decided to run for office. Furthermore, I've read that the move may be only temporary. Robinson's "not sure she will stay," writes Lynn Sweet at The Chicago Sun-Times.
I've considered that perhaps Robinson's move to the White House should be permanent, whether she wants it to be or not, because it's been strongly established that Mrs. Robinson is an important member of the Obama family. Her life could be in danger should she return to her Chicago home to live alone as though her son-in-law never became the first African-American President of the United States of America and her face hasn't been on every major network, a figure in the background of many Obama family photos. If a domestic terrorist or assassin can't get to the first family then why not go after First Grandma?
Consequently, I don't get the people leaving comments on Michael Shear's very brief post about Robinson moving into the White House and complaining:
Granny Robinson knows EXACTLY what she is doing...a free life of luxury at OUR EXPENSE. I would be more understanding if she had lived with the family prior to the election, but she didn't. I am willing to bet that the expense of having grammy living there will exceed $500K over the course of the next 4 years.
We did not vote for Michelle Obama, so she needs to raise her children while her husband is the president.(comment from The Running Nurse on a WaPo blog post)
Actually, what I said isn't quite correct. I do grasp this kind of comment in that it sounds like the anger of the misinformed opposition. As Shear said, Robinson will not be the first mother-in-law to spend time in the White House because former First Lady Laura Bush's mother stayed there frequently, especially over the holidays.
What bristles through this kind of complaint is the animosity toward First Lady Michelle Obama as though she and her children have nothing at all to do with the president himself and by extension that her mother is not as important as the mother of the president would have been if she were alive. It's as though some people view her as Obama's "baby mama," the insulting image cast by Fox News via Michelle Malkin during the campaign. A "baby mama" does not receive the honor of legal wife.
I've read similar comments on other posts about the First
