"Come Home, Will Love You Here"

In a special episode of Stories from a Stranger with Hunter Prosper, four women share their relationships with their mothers and their own experiences of motherhood. The episode opens with Michelle Obama reflecting on the most beautiful thing she has been told — not a single phrase, but the accumulated evidence that her daughters, now adults, can "recite back to me wisdom and philosophy and insight" and carry themselves in the world as "uniquely themselves." She can see her influence in the way they solve problems. That, she says, is the beauty of watching children become who they are.

The Lesson That Armored Her

The conversation turns to Michelle Obama's mother, Marion Robinson. When Hunter Prosper asks about the most beautiful thing she has been told, Obama offers a phrase that has grounded her through public life: "Come home, will love you here." She explains the origin: growing up as a Black working-class kid on the South Side of Chicago, you could not always count on being shown the love and respect you deserved. Her mother wanted her children armored against that. "Don't go to school to get love from your teacher," Marion told them. "You go to school and you get whatever she has to teach you. When you need love, you come home."