It's been sixty days, Michelle. When I first heard your message of change and hope (and love, too), I couldn't wait for a bona fide woman -- sexy, smart, talented, graceful, and powerful -- to be the First Lady of the United States. Wanted so desperately to see you there because of the glorious disappointment that was Condolleezza, that woman who wasn't ours.

But you, Michelle, you are mine and my mother's and my mother's mother's. Like the old grandmother in Maya Angelou's poem, that I memorized in the fifth grade, who lay face down in the moist dirt muttering, "I shall not be moved," you staked a claim in the world of a million women long dead. Their spirits witnessed Obama's arrival on that cool, crisp day in January, but they really came to see you -- in all your glory, decked in gold that glittered and sparkled just as much as their dreams.

I was there, too. And I couldn't wait for your change to manifest in the world. To compare our dreams of transformation in our communities, nation, and around the globe.

I need you to tell me what a Harvard-educated healthcare executive from Chicago's South Side really thinks about sleeping in the same house as Eleanor Roosevelt once did. Tell me how you stayed focused in school, went corporate, but still kept your eye on the prize. How you reconciled your working class upbringing with the elitism attained through your education, while still remaining a down sista on the block. How you met your Barack, commanded the respect due a brilliant woman, won his hand, and raised two well-adjusted young women with high self esteem that will never compromise their self worth. How you inspired those girls, and your husband, to pursue their boundless potential in a racialized/sexist/classist world.

I want to be like you, Michelle: a black woman in a high profile position whom others can look up to and emulate. And I wonder if, when I get there, they'll be looking more at my arms and backside than my brains. Whether they'll be more interested in what I'm wearing than what I'm saying. Whether my power will be marginalized by my appearance and I will find myself in a cage on display for universal womanhood. I want it all, Michelle--for you and for me. To be all that we are in our infinite complexity, to command respect for our contributions, and to not be moved by other people's expectations of being mothered, coddled, and aroused by black female sexuality. I dream for you that world, but I also dream it for me.

And for all women who one day hope to be free.

Respectfully,

Iquo B. Essien ('Alligator Legs')

Update: Read my thoughts on the American Presidency two years after the inauguration here.

I've been thinking lately -- as the market crashes and people lose their homes, jobs, and some even their lives -- that each of us is endowed with a spiritual net worth that is not subject to market pressures or inflation, media distortion or popular sentiment. It is likely more valuable than anything money can buy, and retains its value in the absence of material things.

A friend of mine spoke about Bernie Madoff as a societal outgrowth, a build-up in cultural/generational pressure to pursue the profit motive that inevitably blew a gasket. And I tend to agree.

I think it's distinctly possible that a societal preference for the pursuit of financial net worth, over and above spiritual, has so overwhelmed the natural balance that the scale is now tipping violently back to the other side. And maybe it takes losing everything to fully realize our value as human beings, as naked and vulnerable now as the day we were born.

I can't stomach the "experts" in three-piece suits, now prevalent on CNN, who talk about how we need to save our 401K's and FICO scores when we really need to be saving ourselves. Seriously. We need to focus on our mental well-being, to nurture our spiritual net worth. Material things are ephemeral, fleeting, unlike our own value as human beings.

When bell hooks started writing all those books about love I was as skeptical as the next girl, but I think she was on to something. She started writing them because she felt the United States was moving away from love. She said, "The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others."

So my advice -- maybe more to myself than anyone else right now -- is to talk to each other more, to hug, and to love. They are recession-proof, and help us to preserve ourselves when all is lost.