I was invited to meet privately, one-on-one with Michelle Obama, wife of presidential candidate Barack Obama, after her round table discussion with local military spouses in Norfolk, Va., on Wednesday.

This meeting made my dad, a retired Navy man and McCain supporter, uneasy. Why wasn’t his daughter sitting down with Cindy McCain? Dad wanted to know. (For the record, I have requested a similar sit-down interview with Mrs. McCain, and I am currently awaiting the campaign’s response.)

The meeting made my mom nervous, too, but for different reasons. “What on earth will you wear?” she said. And then, “I think Mrs. Obama is really tall….what will you wear? Oh dear! Have you thought about what you will wear?”

As I left my parents’ house Wednesday morning (remember, I’m currently living with my parents while we are in the middle of a PCS to Maine), I felt incredibly anxious and perhaps more than a tad out of my league. I was wearing a yellow cropped jacket, blue skirt and red flats. I felt fat…and short.

I had already invited Ramone, my wedding photographer, to meet me at Old Dominion University, where the round table was taking place, so that he could document my experience and provide exclusive photos for MSM. At 10:15 a.m., my cell phone rang. “Uh, Sarah, I’m over here on 45th Street with a pool of photographers,” Ramone said. “Where are you?” Apparently Ramone had been swooped up by the mass of media and was being shuttled, like cattle, to a photo-op of Mrs. Obama reading to school children, along with photographers from ABC, NBC and C-Span. When the other photographers asked Ramone who he was with, he said that he was “Sarah Smiley’s photographer.” Ha!

Meanwhile, I was standing outside the auditorium where Mrs. Obama would have the round table discussion, jockeying against other reporters for a spot near the front. All morning, I had been trying to connect with my point of contact within the campaign, but she and I were playing phone tag. Finally, I received the call….when I was using the toilet. I cupped my hand over the receiver, trying desperately not to give away my location with an echo. Then the woman in the stall next to me flushed her toilet.

Somehow, I felt even shorter just then.

At any moment, I feared someone would say, “Who the &%$^ is this girl in the yellow jacket who brought her wedding photographer?”

But I had been invited. I had to keep reminding myself that. Mrs. Obama wanted to speak to me, Sarah Smiley, not because of how I look or dress, and not even because I write a column (well, maybe because I write a column), but because I’m a military wife and I have been a military dependent my entire life.

When Mrs. Obama entered the room, I realized that Mom was right. The First-Lady hopeful is tall. Very tall. But she also is much prettier than she appears on television or in the newspapers. All around Mrs. Obama is an aura of warmth. She is personable, attentive, and strikingly attractive. Her hair is cut in a stylish bob, with a soft layer of bangs swept across her forehead, just like my mom.

With all the “motherly” vibes I was getting from Mrs. Obama, I worried that I would regress to the mindset of a child. I feared I would babble and say too much, like a child venting to their parent.

But I was there for business. I had to reject the urge to hug Mrs. Obama and tell her how I had worried about my shoes matching my jacket and feeling very short in flats, as I might do with my own mother, and remember that I disagree almost entirely with everything her husband has proposed for the military.

Although I could not connect with Mrs. Obama’s husband’s plans for the military (to be discussed further in my weekly syndicated newspaper column published during the week of August 11th; visit www.SarahSmiley.com for information about where you can read it), I connected with Michelle Obama — the woman, working mother, and wife of someone who has committed their life to service — in a more personal way. She is everyone’s ideal next-door neighbor or best girlfriend who tells it to you straight. There is nothing phony about Michelle Obama’s personality. In fact, she has been criticized for perhaps being “too Michelle” — cracking jokes about her husband, speaking her mind despite her husband’s position, etc. — something to which I can certainly identify. When I asked Mrs. Obama how she handles such criticism, her words of wisdom — “It’s just easier for me to be consistently me…It creates a much more saner existence…who you are is really just fine, if it’s fine enough for your husband and your family and your kids, which for many it is.” — resonated with me as a woman, wife, and mother, even if her husband’s plans for supporting military families sometimes made me chuckle. (Do we really need paid support staff for military spouse support groups, whose entire existence has been based for years on volunteers from within the group? Wouldn’t “paid support” just add more red tape? More civil servants? The whole let’s-add-more-staff-and-paid-civil-servants hasn’t made PSD run any smoother, why should we believe it will work better than actual military spouses helping other military spouses when it comes to family support systems?)

My question-and-answer session with Mrs. Obama will be published in its entirety in the October issue of Military Spouse Magazine. You can read about my impressions of the roundtable event and Obama’s plans for the military in next week’s column.

I hope to share my experience with Mrs. McCain with you very soon.