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The garden churned through the seasons, teaching us all sorts of things. We grew cantaloupes that turned out pale and tasteless. We endured pelting rainstorms that washed away our topsoil. Birds snacked on our blueberries; beetles went after the cucumbers. Each time something went a little awry, with the help of Jim Adams, the National Park Service horticulturist who served as our head gardener, and Dale Haney, the White House grounds superintendent, we made small adjustments and carried on, savoring the overall abundance. Our dinners in the residence now often included broccoli, carrots, and kale grown on the South Lawn. We started donating a portion of every harvest to Miriam’s Kitchen, a local nonprofit that served the homeless. We began, too, to pickle vegetables and present them as gifts to visiting dignitaries, along with jars of honey from our new beehives. Among the staff, the garden became a source of pride. Its early skeptics had quickly become fans. For me, the garden was simple, prosperous, and healthy—a symbol of diligence and faith. It was beautiful while also being powerful. And it made people happy.
Over the previous few months, my East Wing staff and I had spoken with children’s health experts and advocates to help us develop the pillars on which our larger effort would be built. We’d give parents better information to help them make healthy choices for their families. We’d work to create healthier schools. We’d try to improve access to nutritious food. And we’d find more ways for young people to be physically active. Knowing that the way we introduced our work would matter as much as anything, I again enlisted the help of Stephanie Cutter, who came on as a consultant to help Sam and Jocelyn Frye shape the initiative, while my communications team was tasked with building a fun public face for the campaign. All the while, the West Wing was apparently fretting about my plans, worried I’d come off as a finger-wagging embodiment of the nanny state at a time when controversial bank and car-company bailouts had left Americans extra leery of anything that looked like government intervention.
My goal, though, was to make this about more than government. I hoped to learn from what Hillary had shared with me about her own experiences, to leave the politics to Barack and focus my own efforts elsewhere. When it came to dealing with the CEOs of soft drink companies and school-lunch suppliers, I thought it was worth making a human appeal as opposed to a regulatory one, to collaborate rather than pick a fight. And when it came to the way families actually lived, I wanted to speak directly to moms, dads, and especially kids.
I wasn’t interested in following the tenets of the political world or appearing on Sunday morning news shows. Instead, I did interviews with health magazines geared toward parents and kids. I hula-hooped on the South Lawn to show that exercise could be fun and made a guest appearance on Sesame Street, talking about vegetables with Elmo and Big Bird. Anytime I spoke to reporters from the White House garden, I mentioned that many Americans had trouble accessing fresh produce in their communities and tried to remark on the health-care costs connected to rising obesity levels. I wanted to make sure we had buy-in from everyone we’d need to make the initiative a success, to anticipate any objections that might be raised. With this in mind, we spent weeks and weeks quietly holding meetings with business and advocacy groups as well as members of Congress. We conducted focus groups to test-market our branding for the project, enlisting the pro bono help of PR professionals to fine-tune the message.
In February 2010, I was finally ready to share my vision. On a cold Tuesday afternoon and with D.C. still digging out from a historic blizzard, I stood at a lectern in the State Dining Room at the White House, surrounded by kids and cabinet secretaries, sports figures and mayors, along with leaders in medicine, education, and food production, plus a bevy of media, to proudly announce our new initiative, which we’d decided to name Let’s Move! It centered on one goal—ending the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation.
What was important to me was that we weren’t just announcing some pie-in-the-sky set of wishes. The effort was real, and the work was well under way. Not only had Barack signed a memorandum earlier that day to create a first-of-its-kind federal task force on childhood obesity, but the three major corporate suppliers of school lunches had announced that they would cut the amount of salt, sugar, and fat in the meals they served. The American Beverage Association had promised to improve the clarity of its ingredient labeling. We’d engaged the American Academy of Pediatrics to encourage doctors to make body mass index measurements a standard of care for children, and we’d persuaded Disney, NBC, and Warner Bros. to air public service announcements and invest in special programming that encouraged kids to make healthy lifestyle choices. Leaders from twelve different professional sports leagues, too, had agreed to promote a 60 Minutes of Play a Day campaign to help get kids moving more.
And that was just the start. We had plans to help bring greengrocers into urban neighborhoods and rural areas known as “food deserts,” to push for more accurate nutritional information on food packaging, and to redesign the aging food pyramid to be more accessible and in line with current research on nutrition. Along the way, we’d work to hold the business community accountable for its decision making around issues impacting children’s health.
It would take commitment and organization to make all this happen, I knew, but that was exactly the kind of work I liked. We were taking on a huge issue, but now I had the benefit of operating from a huge platform. I was beginning to realize that all the things that felt odd to me about my new existence—the strangeness of fame, the hawkeyed attention paid to my image, the vagueness of my job description—could be marshaled in service of real goals. I was energized. Here, finally, was a way to show my full self.
22
One spring morning, Barack and the girls and I were summoned downstairs from the residence to the South Lawn. A man I’d never seen before stood waiting for us in the driveway. He had a friendly face and a salt-and-pepper mustache that gave him an air of dignity. He introduced himself as Lloyd.
“Mr. President, Mrs. Obama,” he said. “We thought you and the girls might like a little change of pace, and so we’ve arranged a petting zoo for you.” He smiled broadly at us. “Never before has a First Family participated in something like this.”
The man gestured to his left and we looked. About thirty yards away, lounging in the shade of the cedar trees, were four big, beautiful cats. There was a lion, a tiger, a sleek black panther, and a slender, spotted cheetah. From where I stood, I could see no fences or chains. There seemed to be nothing penning them in. It all felt odd to me. Most certainly a change of pace.
“Thank you. This is so thoughtful,” I said, hoping I sounded gracious. “Am I right—Lloyd, is it?—that there’s no fence or anything? Isn’t that a little dangerous for kids?”
“Well, yes, of course, we thought about that,” Lloyd said. “We figured your family would enjoy the animals more if they were roaming free, like they would in the wild. So we’ve sedated them for your safety. They’re no harm to you.” He gave a reassuring wave. “Go ahead, get closer. Enjoy!”
Barack and I took Malia’s and Sasha’s hands and made our way across the still-dewy grass of the South Lawn. The animals were larger than I expected, languid and sinewy, their tails flicking as they monitored our approach. I’d never seen anything like it, four cats in a companionable line. The lion stirred slightly as we drew closer. I saw the panther’s eyes tracking us, the tiger’s ears flattening just a little. Then, without warning, the cheetah shot out from the shade with blinding speed, rocketing right at us.