Some folks will ask me, “Whoopi, you wear a white button-up shirt almost every day. Why’s that?”
See, I don’t care what I wear, as long as it’s comfortable. A white button-up shirt seems like an easy solution to looking okay when I’m in public. It looks and feels clean.
And now that I think about it, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I wore one every single school day as a kid—I went to Catholic school. That’s at least 1,600 days of wearing a uniform to get to the eighth grade. By the end of kindergarten, you kind of no longer give a shit about what you’re wearing. It was always the same: a white button-up shirt and a plaid skirt.
I went to a whole lot of Mass as a child. I had to go. It was required of kids going to St. Columba Catholic School. I genuflected my way through grammar school. We all would head out on Sunday morning for church, and we didn’t eat meat on Fridays either. None of that made sense to me, but I knew that as soon as I got older, I was not going to church anymore. There were quite a few places of worship in the neighborhood, and going into these different places to hear that not everyone believes the same thing or way was a good thing for us because it allowed us to ask questions. Though it was annoying for some of the teachers.
My family didn’t know it at the time, but I went through grade school with dyslexia, never having a name for it. I have zero memory of any educational triumphs. Mostly, I tried to get through. I learned the Ten Commandments, but when I was seven, they made sense to me in their original form. You know, on those stone tablets Moses hauled down the mountainside. Before the church wrote out its own definitions for each one, the original version was a good life guide.
Like the eighth commandment, “Don’t steal.” Seems clear to me. Somebody is going to pay for it, and you didn’t legit get it. Go get your own.
Number six is pretty unquestionable: “Thou shalt not kill.” Nobody wants to leave this incarnation once they arrive in full form. Leave them be.
“Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor.” You know how it is with trash talk about other people: “They’re bad; you’re good.” “They’re idiots; you’re a genius.” “They suck; you’re normal.” It’s a vicious circle. They’re thinking the same shit about you. So, commandment number nine is like today’s STFU! Keep it to yourself. Maybe they will, too.
I’ve got to say, nobody made a bigger impression on me about how to share the earth with other people than my mother. But it was never through any rules or labels of what was sin and what wasn’t. She was far more subtle. She was determined to make me decide for myself, to come to my own conclusions about how to be.
I had a friend, Robert, when I was in grammar school. He was different, no doubt. He was bottom-heavy and had pimples on his face, but he was a good kid, smart and kind. There was a small group of us that fit that category, different from the other kids. I felt like I got Robert and he got me. So, we hung out and talked.
Once, our school got to take a daylong field trip somewhere, and my mother volunteered to be one of the chaperones that came with us. On that day, I was one of the popular kids. I was talking it up with everybody and feeling happy.
When we got home later that evening, I was really excited about where we’d been, and I was strutting and feeling my shit about my day.
My mother looked at me and said, “You had a good time today, didn’t you?”
I said, “Yeah, I did. I had a really good time. I’m really happy. I was, you know, talking to lots of people and hanging out.”
“Oh. Yeah, I saw that,” she said. “Were some of them the same girls that made you cry a couple weeks back?”
“Yeah, they were,” I said. “But it’s better now because we are all friends.”
“Oh, I see. I wonder if Robert feels like that.”
“What? If Robert feels like what?”
“Well, kind of happy and kind of glad that he was able to fit in.”
I got really quiet. I realized that I might not have been nice to Robert on the trip. I may have even laughed at him a bit, like the other popular kids did that day. I didn’t pull him into the group like a friend would do.
That started to eat me up. We were friends, and I somehow didn’t respect that I needed to be his friend when other people were looking, too.
I went from strutting to hanging my head for how I had treated Robert.
Ma said to me, “I didn’t say this to make you feel bad. I said this so that you will remember what this feels like, when you make somebody feel bad like I think you might have made Robert feel today.”
When she held that up to me, I really wanted to go in the corner, get into a box, and close the lid because it was a terrible feeling.
I knew what it felt like to be the one left out. I’d been there myself, more than once. You know, everybody loves you when you have something they want. They’re all your friends when you’re flush with candy. After the candy’s gone, they’ll say something like, “Stay here. We have to go do something and we’ll be right back.”
Then an hour later, you realize you’re one duped eight-year-old and those friends aren’t coming back.
Ma would say to me, “You didn’t like it when somebody did it to you. You have to remember what this feels like or you’ll always be walking into walls.”
I’m really glad that I got all of that from her early on in my life because it does shade how I am now.
I always say if it’s not in the Ten Commandments, then it’s nothing to worry about. The rules are right there. Jesus even packaged it all into one flat statement: “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” Meaning, don’t mess with people if you don’t want them to mess with you. Don’t hurt other people. Just don’t. That’s what I try to live by now the best I can because it was my mom’s approach to life, which is pretty remarkable, considering she had probably gone through a lot of shit in the hospital for two years.
I never heard my mother yell at anyone, before or after that time. She wasn’t a yeller. I could tell when she was angry, though. Her face would change, and the sun would go down. It would get a little dark and chilly. But she wouldn’t ever yell or strike out in any way. She’d remove herself from the scene.
She would tell me and Clyde never to initiate a fight. She’d say, “Don’t swing on anyone, even a man. You can’t be sure he won’t swing back on you.”
But she’d also say that if somebody else got up in my face and swung at me, I’d better fight back until I could get away. She was very much about not starting shit, but she also knew that “turning the other cheek” wasn’t going to help if somebody came at you.
She didn’t impose her beliefs on anyone else. She accepted that people have different realities, and as long as theirs didn’t get in her personal space, she was good, doing her own thing.
She met enough people in the early parts of her life to know that there were a lot of good people, a lot of kind people in the world. She let me know that people will give each other a hand if you let them know what you need somehow. That’s how it was in the projects when I was little. There might be someone out of work or having a tough month. Folks would figure out how to get that person a box full of things they needed to get by. Or somebody would show up out of the blue and say, “Hey, do you want this extra (whatever) that I have?”
My mom believed that if you knew someone needed something and you were able to help them out, then you should. And if somebody helps you out, you should pay it forward. Help somebody else out.
She believed in the humanity of people because, at the time, in the 1960s, things were changing. Women were standing up for their rights, including things as simple as opening a bank account without a husband. My mom was out there with her placards on sticks, making her statements along with the other marching women.
They all faced blowback from folks who held the traditional beliefs that women shouldn’t make their own decisions, have jobs, and choose how to take care of themselves. My mother’s attitude was if you’re hungry, if you need a roof over your head, if you have kids to take care of, then you do what you have to do. You do the work, whatever that might be. She was very nonjudgmental about many things, mostly about other people.
When I became an adult, I had several friends who worked in the sex business.
One day, one of them said to Ma, “Do I make you uncomfortable because, you know, this is what I do for a living?”
“Why would you make me feel uncomfortable?” my mom asked in return, the way she always did, answering a question with another question.
My friend said, “Well, I didn’t want to stay if it bothers you.”
She said, “No. I’m fine with what you do, unless you start shooting ping-pong balls at me from your vaginal area. That could make me a little uncomfortable. Other than that, I think we’re fine.”
Some women in the projects treated my mom with a cold shoulder. She wasn’t like them. She wouldn’t gossip or talk trash about anybody else.
She would spend her time writing, reading, or teaching herself to play piano. My mom seemed to be fine on her own, doing things her way, so some of the other women acted suspicious of her.
I’m sure there was much more drama with these women that I wasn’t privy to as a child. But my mother never talked about it. She had her tight circle of friends: her cousin Arlene and a few others that lived nearby. She didn’t need to be popular. Ever.
When I was rehearsing my first Broadway show, these same women had the attitude toward my mom like, “You’re the one who ended up with a famous kid? You?”
Then, when the show opened, a lot of those women suddenly started coming around, saying, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening! Good for Caryn! I would really like to see her show.”
My mom called me and said, “Is it wrong for me to ask for six tickets?”
“No. I don’t think it’s a problem,” I said. “I’ve been told I have house seats. I can give you those seats. Who did you want to bring?”
She named the women she was bringing.
I said, “Are you kidding me? Why would you give any tickets to those women?”
“Listen, it’s very important that I bring them to the theater. It’s very important that I be the person I hope I am.”
So I said, “Okay.”
She told me, “This is going to happen for a couple of more weeks, just so you know.”
She brought them to the theater in groups of four or five so they could see the show for free. Afterward, they would come backstage, and then my mother would go out with them and have white wine. She would laugh and drink with these women who had broken her heart for twenty-seven years. She never let on that there was a problem.
Suddenly they all decided they wanted to be good friends with my mother. Everybody wanted to hang out with her.
That’s when she responded, “Well, it’s really not me. It’s not what I do. But it’s good you got to see Caryn’s show. I’m so glad you could join us.”
They got the message.
My mother, who could have taken the last swing, went on her way without them.
She showed me how to do that kind of thing, to be okay with myself when I was a teenager.
I have a friend, Rosie, who was my friend forever, starting in grade school. As a teenager, I started dressing like a hippie because I liked the look. I wore overalls and faded work shirts and Afro puffs on my head.
One day we were going to the movies together. Rosie stopped at the door and said, “I think you should change your clothes.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m okay like this.”
She told me, “We’re going to the theater.”
“So? I don’t want to change my clothes. I think I’m fine.”
Rosie looked away from me.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She hesitated and then said, “You just look like you’re dirty.”
“But I’m not. You know that.”
She turned around. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the movies today.”
I said, “Okay. Fine.”
Then she left.
I said to my mother, “Was I wrong?”
And she said, “I don’t know. Were you?”
“Why me? Why wasn’t she going to change?”
“Because she thought she was clean, and she didn’t feel you were clean. So, she gave you a choice.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” my mother said. “It matters what you think and feel about something.”
The nuns who were my teachers in grammar school taught that there was right and there was wrong. And you didn’t want to do wrong because it was a sin and, depending on how bad it was, God was going to punish you.
My mom taught me something even more effective. She taught me to make choices on my own that nobody else could make for me. Then I had to live with however those choices made me feel. I had to stand up. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have to fear punishment from God. I only had to think about whether I could live with myself and my choices.
Because of her, I was always me. I followed how I felt. She wouldn’t even let me hitch on to her opinion of God.
One time, I asked her, “Do you believe in God?”
She lit one of her More cigarettes and said, “Who wants to know?”
“Me. No one else. I’m asking.”
She said, “Yes. But who are you asking for?”
I was like, “Ma, I’m asking for me.”
“Are you? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Ma. I’m pretty sure.”
“Okay,” she said. “Because sometimes, you know, we ask questions because we want guidance to hide in instead of thinking for ourselves.”
I said, “No, I just wondered if you believe in God.”
“Well, I believe in my God.”
And I said, “Is your God different from other people’s God?”
She said, “I think, yes, sometimes.”
She was thoughtful. Yeah. You know, she was really thoughtful. She didn’t rush her judgments or her answers. She didn’t expect God to drop in and rescue us or think that we got to blame him for whatever mess humans get themselves into.
Her attitude was if you believe in God, then you have to believe that God is really smart and made us smart enough to know how to maneuver through this life.