Michelle Obama got a big Minnesota standing O when she walked onto the Xcel Energy Center stage in St. Paul on Wednesday evening, wearing black pants and and a black top with sparkly discs on the sleeves and shoulders.
"I think this is the biggest crowd we've had," the former First Lady said as she stood on a stage with blue lights running up and down the sides.
"I love you," one of the 16,000 people in the sold-out audience shouted, to which Obama replied, "I love you, too, Babe."
Obama was in Minnesota as part of her tour for "Becoming," her best-selling memoir. Talking with Michele Norris, a Minnesota native and former host of National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," Obama was funny, passionate and inspiring. She said she thinks readers have responded so well to her memoir because "they see themselves in my little journey."
The popularity of Obama's book, which is frank and honest, has made her a literary rock star and the show's slick production values, with four big screens, dancing spotlights and loud, loud music, rivaled any pop music performance. As a prelude to Obama's appearance, 45 minutes of videos and pictures of her were shown, tracing her "becoming" from being a poor girl from Chicago's South Side to the White House.
It was clearly a women's night, with at least 90 percent of the audience made up of Obama's female admirers, including families of mothers, daughters and grandmothers, aunts and nieces and groups of friends. The X staff anticipated the gender balance and turned some of the men's restrooms into women's facilities.
Michelle Obama, left, fist bumps with moderator Michele Norris beneath the famous 2011 photo of Michelle with Barack Obama, onstage at the Xcel Energy Center on a stop on her "Becoming: An Intimate Conversation With Michelle Obama" tour. (Scott Takushi/ Pioneer Press)Before the program began, a long line of attendees waited to take their pictures with a big cutout of Obama beside one of her favorite quotes: "Find your flame and keep it lit."
The audience was invited to post pictures and comments about Obama that were flashed on the big screens. They said:
"I admire her very much…fills my soul with joy and goodness."
"Seeing Michelle with the coolest woman I know."
"We are your biggest fans – Forever our First Lady.."
"My mom and I seeing the country's mom."
"Absolutely blessed to be here to see Michelle – what an honor."
Recalling that her husband gave his victory speech at the X after he won the Democratic Party's nomination for president, she told what really happened with that widely photographed 2008 fist bump the couple gave one another.
"We were separated because I was an asset to the campaign," she said. "It was the first time I'd seen Barack in weeks and this was our way to connect in this crazy journey. I was proud of him. He was the underdog for a long time. I knew he could handle anything."
"Becoming" begins with Obama in the kitchen of their new home outside Washington, D.C., wearing cutoff shorts, eating cheese toast. It was the first time she had been completely alone in 10 years, without being surrounded by staff and her security detail as she was in the White House. She recalled that if the family wanted to go outside for fresh air when Obama was president, they had to go through elaborate procedures with the people who guarded them. So she was enjoying "the simplicity of walking downstairs and making myself a snack."
"This was the beginning of my next phase of becoming," she said, referring to being a private citizen. "Now we have a regular home with a front door that we open. People are surprised when they come to the door; 'It's you!' "Yes, we live here." Drawing laughs, she told of how their two dogs had never heard other dogs bark when they lived in the White House: "They looked at me and I said, 'This is freedom'."
Recalling her childhood, she admitted, "I was sassy," but "the beauty of my parents' wisdom was knowing children come into this world with their own temperament."
Carla Foster of Brooklyn Park poses with a Michelle Obama poster atXcel Energy Center, March 13, 2019. It's a once in a lifetime event,I want to see how she got to where she is," says Foster. (ScottTakushi / Pioneer Press)They lived in an integrated neighborhood and she had friends of all races and ages, "a true melting pot." And then, some of her friends vanished. She learned what white flight meant, with real estate agents telling people they needed to get out because "these people" were moving in. "They were afraid of the texture of our hair and the color of our skin, and they were told to run," she explained, adding that she felt "broken."
"Poor folks moved in. I felt it as a second-grader when my classroom was utter chaos. There were no white students. We didn't get homework and I was outraged. I knew they were selling me short."
"That fear of 'the other' is in neighborhoods today," she said. "I want you to remember I was the 'other.' Remember we are not that different from one another."
Although Obama didn't know anything about colleges, she saw her brother go to Princeton on an athletic scholarship.
"I was smarter than him," she said with a laugh. But she was told by her school counselor "you are not Princeton material."
"For women and people of color, somebody told them, 'Don't set your sights too high,' " she said. "All you young people, don't live down to other people's expectations of you."
She got into Princeton and picked law as a career because she liked to talk and debate, and found it wasn't meant for her as soon as she got out of school. The good part was she met Barack Obama, whom she was supposed to mentor.
"I sort of looked at him and thought, 'Who names their kid Barack?' The folks in the firm were going gaga over him. I thought, 'So the white folks think the black guy is cool.' Then I had to call him and I heard that voice. I was like 'whoop.' "
In the beginning of their relationship, Michelle was standoffish and that was a good thing because "we became friends over a summer. I saw how he treated others, who Barack was as a person and then community organizer. He was smart, kind, funny and he didn't care about money, (he was) open to different ways to live."
Obama drew loudest applause when she talked about seeing a marriage counselor.
"I was honest about that because I know so many young people who look to me and Barack. When you are modeling for others there is a deep need to be honest."
Their marriage was challenged by the births of their two daughters. Michelle was doing most of the child care and she needed help. And, her husband's ambitions were taking them somewhere she wasn't sure she wanted to go.
"We needed to talk it through because I was going to kill him," she admitted, drawing more laughs. "I brought him to counseling for him to be fixed…it doesn't work that way. I had to learn to prioritize me." Thanks to help from her mother, she found a workable schedule.
When the family moved into the White House, Michelle tried to keep her daughters steady by taking the attitude that "this is no big deal. Get up, go to school." What kids need, she said, is stability, security and safety and that somebody loves them."
The most touching part of her presentation was her recollection of the period of negative press, when she was called unpatriotic and worse.
"Being female, black and strong translated for some to 'angry,' " she said, adding that she thinks part of this hostility was because she was an effective campaigner.
Obama wants young people to know "we all go through these times when people put things on us that has nothing to do with us. But there is damage that happens and it is real."
She admitted that this negativity made her ready to quit, get off the campaign. But, in typical Michelle style, "I learned to suck it up, roll my sleeves up and get on with it."
© Getty Images elephant and dog sit under the rain 
