BREAKFAST WITH Barack Obama

MONDAY These cornflakes are real and they are everywhere. And I tell you this, Michelle, I say.

The packet may have been shaken, but the flakes will recover.

So it is with profound gratitude and great humility that I accept my breakfast cornflakes.

Michelle asks, Do I want milk? And to that I say this.

Our milk will come. Our milk will flow, and it will flow true. Our milk will flow smooth, and it will flow well chilled. But our milk will not flow if it is not poured.

So let me promise you this, Michelle. That milk will not pour itself over your flakes or my flakes. That milk will not pour itself over the flakes of the poor or the flakes of the rich, the flakes of the needy or the flakes of those folks who spend their lives in comfort. No, Michelle. To be poured, and—if the need has it—re-poured, the jug in which that milk dwells must first be lifted by ourselves.

TUESDAY Michelle asks, Do I want an egg?

In my life, Michelle, I say, I have learned that eggs may be found in unlikely places; that though eggs may come from chickens, they rarely remain with chickens. No: they spread themselves far and wide, often to end up on the great breakfast plates of America.

Eggs or flakes?, sighs Michelle.

I tell you this, Michelle. I reject as false the choice between our eggs, howsoever they may be served, and our flakes, from whichsoever packet they may be poured. We will not falter until we have harnessed our eggs and our flakes, and, with eyes fixed on the horizon, those two ingredients will combine to produce a great American breakfast of which our grandchildren may yet be proud.

WEDNESDAY Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Now, you may believe one thing and I may believe another.

But I promise you this. That egg and that chicken are two very different things. It avails us nothing to dip our toast in our chicken, nor to spit-roast our egg over our grill.

On those points we find agreement. And it is our agreements that make us what we are today.

THURSDAY This morning, I say to my wife and my girls, the waffles we face are real. They will not go away. Commeal waffles, buckwheat waffles, pumpkin waffles, chicken ’n’ waffles. The waffles we face are serious and manifold.

In my life, I tell Sasha and Malia, I have learned that there are three ways to eat a waffle. With a spoon. With a fork. Or with a spoon and fork. I put the choices before them. You may eat your waffle with a spoon. Or you may eat your waffle with a fork. Or—and this is the choice awaiting you, and that shall one day await us all—you may prefer to eat your waffle with, yes, both a spoon and a fork. So which is it to be?

I pause, and look up from my breakfast podium. The girls are already halfway through eating their waffles. With their hands.

We could not wait for you to finish, Daddy, they say.

FRIDAY That we are at the culmination of an extraordinary weekday-breakfast schedule is now well understood. So I ask my family to heed this lesson. Each of us—Michelle, Sasha, Malia Ann—has the freedom to make of our own breakfast what we may. But this let us never forget: We have the obligation to pass the salt to those among us who are unable to reach for it themselves. And the pepper too. Let us not forget the pepper.

—As TOLD TO CRAIG BROWN