Michelle Obama’s amazing story is hers, not ours

The story of a young South Side girl who became Michelle Obama is amazing. But we must remember that it is her story, not everyone’s.

Certainly, when reading her new memoir, “Becoming,” most of us can find something that is familiar. For me, it was her story of taking piano lessons as a child on an old upright with uneven colored keys and a chipped middle C.

But the mere fact that Obama and I grew up with access to a piano sets us apart from many young people who are desperately trying to write their own stories in today’s difficult times.

Perhaps Obama’s strongest asset came simply by chance: She was raised by a loving mom and dad who saw her potential even when she doubted herself. They encouraged her to be the best at whatever she did. Success was expected of her.

Church choir directors, city laborers, carpenters and retired Pullman porters were among the working-class people who lived in her midst. In that way, though lacking many of the luxuries money could bring, Obama was privileged. And so was I.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had a childhood like that? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every girl and boy grew up to tell an amazing story like hers?

The reality, though, is that too many will not. And it won’t be because they weren’t smart enough or because they didn’t dream big enough. It will be because life, as it too often does, gets in the way.

It will be because no one believed in them or encouraged them to believe in themselves. It will be because they never dreamed it was possible to dream bigger, and because they never knew that big dreams are catchable if pursued hard enough.

Their stories might pale because the path to success is uneven and shaky and often laden with barriers designed to keep some of us from getting through. Many of our children never gain the skills required to keep forging ahead or the support needed to help them carry the load.

During her recent book launch in Chicago, I listened to every word, eagerly grasping at tidbits that seemed to connect my life with hers. I related to the story about the high school counselor who tried to discourage her from applying to Yale. I, too, had a teacher who didn’t think I was good enough to be on the school’s newspaper staff.

All the while, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about a young woman named Ta’taleisha Jones and young man named Thomas Cunningham. They were among a small group of students who met with the then-first lady during a visit to Harper High School in the West Englewood neighborhood in 2013 and brought her to tears with their stories.

In the years after, I checked in with them occasionally to see how their lives were going. Both were growing up in dangerous and impoverished sections of Englewood. Their futures were uncertain, their daily lives filled with detours.

Obama had tried to convince them that there wasn’t much distance between her childhood and theirs and that they could overcome obstacles just as she had.

But the teenagers felt disconnected with the African-American woman who had grown up on the South Side and now lived in the White House. They weren’t sure that she understood how different things were for them, how much more difficult it was to be their best, as she had asked of them.

Jones, who was then 16, told Obama so. But as time went on, she told me last week, she began to see the possibilities.

Now, as she is about to turn 22, Jones said that brief encounter with Obama changed her life. While things weren’t always good at home — the family has moved three times in the last three years — she used Obama’s wisdom as a road map to achieve more than she once thought she deserved.

“I look at things differently now,” she told me. “Now I think about how things impact my life. I sit and think about stuff before I do it. I became a better person from sitting down with her.”

Jones graduated with a 3.9 grade-point average and was salutatorian of her class. She’s completing her last year at Malcolm X College and plans to enroll in nursing school next year.

But every student’s story isn’t that positive.

Obama took a special interest in Cunningham, and even wrote a note congratulating him on his graduation in

2014.

During the school meeting, she asked him to promise her that he would stop playing dice and concentrate on his school work. But he was hesitant.

“I can’t even promise you that,” he said. Without a job or family support, Cunningham explained, shooting dice was his only means of making money.

He did try for a while, though. But living with his 84-year-old grandmother, his home life was too unstable. He saw his close friend get shot to death, and gunmen were after him for testifying at the trial. He was accepted into Kennedy King College after graduation, but he never enrolled.

Life was just too chaotic to think about the future, but he appreciated that Obama had tried to help him look ahead.

I couldn’t talk with him last week. He’s awaiting trial on drug and gun charges.

At 23, his story is still being written. We have yet to see who he will become.