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146
JUNE 2012
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Miriam’s Kitchen, which is a soup kitchen
right in our neighborhood. None of the
food goes to waste. And there is a lot of it.
HEMISPHERES:
After kids from a local
elementary school helped you with that
first harvest, one student wrote an essay
about it that kept returning to the
concept of gentleness. It seemed like a
revelation to him, and you wrote that
it moved you to tears.
OBAMA:
We’d had the kids with us for
most of the year, and they invited me to
their school one day to see their garden.
The students had wri en essays, and
a few of them got up and read them
to me. There was this kid, he’s this
Hispanic young man, a jock fi h-grader
dude, and here he is talking about how
kind the people were to him and how
they taught him to be gentle, even
with the earthworms and pulling the
tomatoes off the vine. And seeing this
kid talking about tomatoes in such
poetic terms exemplified everything
I had hoped the garden would be.
That was emotional for me. The kids
were learning things that we weren’t
teaching overtly.
HEMISPHERES:
I remember in your
husband’s book
The Audacity of Hope
, he
wrote that he sees in you “the slightest hint
of uncertainty, as if, deep inside, she knew
how fragile things really were.” Gardening’s
all about being mindful of the fragility of
the world. Do you think that’s why you
connected with it the way you did?
OBAMA:
You’re asking me to go way
deeper than I think I’ve ever gone—
sheesh! Well, I’m sure that part of it is
being a mother and watching my own
kids grow. They’re at that age when
they’re starting to sprout like the garden
in summer. It’s such a powerful thing to
watch a kid change shoe sizes in a ma er
of months. It reminds you that time is
fleeting. Things happen; a seed turns into
life. It’s instantaneous, in a way, but then
you have to care for that life. And that’s
something we’re also trying to show kids:
They have to take care of themselves like
they’re taking care of the plants in their
garden. I ask kids all the time if they’d
think to water their plants with soda,
and they’re usually like, “No, that would
be crazy.” But we can’t expect people to
know these things today. If a kid sees a
commercial for a sugary cereal, he’s going
to want it, but that cereal is not the best
food for this “plant” he’s trying to grow.
HEMISPHERES:
It’s depressing that such a
simple insight seems so profound now.
OBAMA:
You know, it didn’t used to be
that way. That’s the hope that I have,
that we see this change over the course
of my lifetime. What I’ve learned in deal-
ing with this issue is that we have all the
answers right in our hands. Solving this
problem doesn’t require new science, a
new drug. It’s right there—it’s learning
how to treat ourselves as gently as we
treat our gardens. With this generation
we’re rese ing the clock and restarting
the conversation.
THE
HEMI
Q&A:
MICHELLE OBAMA
HEMISPHERES:
The book’s purpose is
serious, but there’s a bit of humor in there
too. You had a beehive—which now
contains about 70,000 bees—built on the
White House grounds. Your husband was
understandably concerned about this part
of the project, since the hive would be near
his basketball court. How’d you go about
convincing him?
OBAMA:
You know, he didn’t really have
a say. [Laughs.] We did have to have a
discussion, though, because Malia is
terrified of bees. She was stung once
and still harbors that fear. But a er she
talked to the beekeeper and saw the
hive, she understood that honeybees
are not killer a ack bees. They’re pre y
busy doing what they do. It didn’t take a
lot of convincing.
HEMISPHERES:
She’s at peace with
the bees now?
OBAMA:
She’s at peace with the bees.
They live in harmony way down by the
garden. We go down there o en just to
check them out. And they don’t swarm.
The hive is pre y far away fromwhere
people are. It’s a safe entity. It’s an
accepted member of
our
hive.
HEMISPHERES:
But they did swarm once,
over by the northwest gate. When the
beekeeper got there, he found the Secret
Service agents huddled in the guard booth.
Luckily, he managed to get the bees back
to the hive easily enough.
OBAMA:
I didn’t hear about that until we
started the book, actually. No one told
me! It was a freak accident. And I didn’t
tell Malia about it.
HEMISPHERES:
Hopefully she won’t read
this interview, then.
OBAMA:
Trust me, if it involves me
she won’t read it. [Laughs.] They’re not
interested in what we do.
Hemispheres
editor in chief
JOE KEOHANE
’s
basil plant actually winces when he
goes near it.