Michelle Obama Reveals How Relationship With Her Daughters Has Evolved

Michelle Obama has revealed how her daughters Malia and Sasha have grown up since leaving the White House, even serving their famous parents a charcuterie board.

The former First Lady, 59, shared how her relationship with her children has changed in her new memoir, The Light We Carry.

In the book's sixth chapter, titled Partnering Well, Obama described how she felt "charmed" when her two daughters decided to become roommates while living in Los Angeles.

Sasha, 21, studies at the University of Southern California, while her older sister, 24, works an entry level writing job after graduating from Harvard.

The pair live in a small apartment in a quiet neighborhood, according to Obama.

"It makes me happy to think we've raised siblings who, now in their early twenties, have also managed to be friends," she wrote.

Until they moved into their new apartment, Obama described the pair as "largely itinerant" moving between college dorm rooms and furnished sublet apartments, "never traveling with more than could reasonably fit into the trunk of a car."

"A few times a year, one or both of them would land back at home with us for a week or two of vacation, swan-diving into the comforts of our grown-up existence, reveling in the full fridge, the absence of roommates and easy access to laundry, the loafing sweetness of a resident dog," Obama wrote.

She described how they would "fuel up on food, sleep, privacy, and family time," before swapping their clothes over depending on the season before leaving again.

"Now, though, things were changing. They'd found a grownup place for themselves, something that felt a little less temporary," Obama wrote.

"Our daughters themselves were starting to appear more grown-up, more anchored into adult life."

Their mom caught glimpses of their new home over video calls and how they were building their adult life together.

"They were learning for themselves how 'home' is done," Obama wrote.

Doing the Dusting

"One night I was talking to Sasha over FaceTime but quickly got distracted by Malia, who was moving around in the background, running a Swiffer duster over a shelf loaded with trinkets and books. She was dusting their belongings!"

She added: "It looked so adult, even if I couldn't help but notice that she hadn't yet learned to pick up or move the objects on the shelf so that they could be dusted on all sides."

But it was when she went to visit the girls with her husband and former U.S president, Barack Obama, that she really got a shock as her daughters showed them around "with glee."

"They'd done a nice job with it, having poked around yard sales and shopped at a nearby IKEA, watching their budget. They were sleeping on box springs and mattresses with no bed frame, but they'd found some pretty bedspreads to cover it all. They'd picked up a set of quirky end tables at a flea market. They had a dining room table, though hadn't yet found affordable chairs," Obama described.

They were planning on going out for dinner, but the girls wanted to serve their parents a drink when Malia produced a self-made charcuterie board and then revealed how shocked she was at the price of cheese.

"Sasha attempted to fix us a couple of weak martinis—Wait, you know how to make martinis?—and served them in water glasses, first laying down a couple of newly purchased coasters so that we wouldn't mark up their brand-new coffee table with our drinks," Obama recalled.

"I watched all this with some astonishment. It's not that I'm surprised that our kids have grown up, exactly, but somehow the whole scene—the coasters, in particular—signaled a different sort of landmark, the type of thing every parent spends years scanning for, which is evidence of common sense."

Obama added: "As Sasha set down our drinks that night, I thought about all the coasters she and her sister hadn't bothered to use when they were under our care, all the times over the years I'd tried to get water marks out of various tables, including at the White House."

During the visit Obama realized, "the dynamics had changed."

"We were at their table now. They owned it, and they were protecting it. Clearly, they had learned," she wrote.

The Light We Carry hit bookstores today and is Obama's follow-up book to her debut bestseller Becoming, which sold 11.5 million copies in its first year of release.

She said she wrote her newest memoir to share "practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world."

"I've learned it's okay to recognize that self-worth comes wrapped in vulnerability, and that what we share as humans on this earth is the impulse to strive for better, always and no matter what. We become bolder in brightness," Obama wrote on her website.

"In my experience, this type of self-knowledge builds confidence, which in turn breeds calmness and an ability to maintain perspective, which leads, finally, to being able to connect meaningfully with others—and this to me is the bedrock of all things."

Obama served as First Lady during her husband's two terms as president from 2008 - 2016.

Before that she grew up on the South Side of Chicago and graduated from Princeton University and Harvard.

She worked as a lawyer until she met the future president and campaigned for healthy eating, LGBT rights, supporting military families and helping women balance work and family.