Exhale (Shoop, Shoop)

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

“Sometime you'll laugh, sometimes you'll cry
Life never tells us, the when's or why's
When you've got friends, to wish you well
You'll find your point when you will exhale (yeah, yeah, say)”

— Whitney Houston

My Mom looked like Whitney Houston. By chance, I read an essay this Sunday morning about how people no longer dress up for church. The words brought up deep memories for me…of my Mom.

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I try not to think about horrors in the world. I try not to think of horrors as images of hatred and evil disturb me on a profound level. I don’t just ignore and dismiss. I am wired for empathy. Like many of you, we know pain and sorrow are on the rampage.

I want to exhale.

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My children never met my Mom. My Mom died six years before my first child was born. The generations never met, and that has been sadness for me over the years. I have tried to describe my Mom for my children. But how do I capture my Mom’s voice for my children? How do I bring Mom’s relentless work ethic and vision into this world so that her grandchildren could feel my Mom, know my Mom, understand my Mom? It cannot be done, although I have tried as much as one can. The effort is noble while falling short.

As I type, a color picture of my Grandma sits on my wall in front of me. Few things united my sister and me. In a lifetime of difference, we shared a fierce devotion to Grandma. I visited my sister’s home for the first time after her passing. And what did I see? A grand picture of Grandma on the counter. Grandma was dressed to the nines in her white stewardess outfit for church. The picture was taken in Grandma’s backyard, the brick outdoor fireplace being the stuff of countless childhood memories.

I was given Grandma’s picture as a sign of what connected us as siblings.

Life never tells us the whens or whys...

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I am playing Exhale (Shoop, Shoop) as I type this essay.

Whitney Houston came out of the church as did my Mom. I listen to the angelic voice of Whitney and remember how my Mom would dress me for church service on Sunday mornings. I always, always wore a suit (might have been my only suit/smile), a clip-on tie (oh the memories), a white shirt (not a button-down), and dress shoes that my Dad would shine for me with black shoe shine polish. It was the shoe shine and Dad’s finesse I remember. The finest black shoe polish for one’s son on Sunday morning.

Just this memory brings forth a tear for me of what once was. These are the most core, precious memories of my Mom, Dad and childhood. Church was central. Family was central. No one used the word “Oppression.”

Do you want to know the words I remember Mom using with me every night? “Jesus Loves Me This I Know, For the Bible Tells Me So, Little ones to Him belong; They are weak, but He is strong.” I kneeled down beside my bed and recited those words with Mom every night…in the Green House…on Twyman Road.

When I wrote about Israeli moms last Sunday, I wrote about all moms. I wrote about my Mom.

Shoop, Shoop, Shoop

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Of all my children, my Mom lives on the most in my Bright and Morning Star. Same grace, poise, instinctive sense of class. A natural dignity.

My wife only met my Mom once as a well woman. We all met at the Boar’s Head Inn outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. I wanted to show off for Mom and Dad. My Mom sized up this young woman from Brooklyn who seemed to have a hold on her son’s favor. Days after that lunch, my Mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Everyone will meet our end. We just don’t know the when and the why. For my Mom, it was inoperable liver cancer at the age of 50.

And so the long good bye started. Each time we visited Mom, she would be more and more frail.

How I wished Mom could have been at her best to know my future wife. Instead, a most classy woman had to accept her physical body withering away as the tumor grew and grew.

I felt sad but I never cried. Stoic persona in public. A stiff upper lip.

I did cry when my sister told me Mom had died. I shook and trembled and cried on the floor like a baby.

I don’t do loss well.

My sister and I were united in devotion to Mom. Whenever I visited home, we would buy flowers together and pay our respects at her tombstone.

I have taken my kids several times to Mom’s grave in Southside Richmond.

Conclusion and Meaning —

Life never tells us when sorrow and loss will visit us. But know this — my Mom lives on in my Bright and Morning Star. The essence of Mom I knew as a child, that part of my Mom we call class and grace and poise, lives on.

Life never tells us the when’s or the why’s. And this morning, I remember a Womack teenager, tall and gangly and orphaned and taken in by a big brother, who met a young man with an impossible full name at church. My Mom always dressed up for church.

That church meeting led to a marriage, and me.

I remember Mom.

“Mom, Aunt Juanita once told me you were the hardest working person Juanita had ever met. That comment stayed with me through the years. I had more opportunities than you did in life as an orphan, and I devoted myself to working harder than even you did to right wrongs in your days. Life has been good to me, and I wish you could have seen your grandchildren…all beautiful and accomplished in their own special ways. You would be so proud, mom. I see your profile in [my daughter] every day. One day, we will meet again and rejoice in how amazing it is to be loved.” — Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America, Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr. and Jennifer Richmond, page 358.