THE LAST SHIRT
“And she delighted, DELIGHTED, in buying me clothes. That was a THING.”
As a career person, my mom was fierce. She was the first American to get a doctorate of musicology from Oxford University. Not just the first woman, not just the first Black woman, but the first American. She edited a musicology journal for 17 years, she wrote 80-plus articles, she contributed to a book on Paul Robeson. And she was a professor, for 44 years, in the music department at Howard University.
She loved teaching. She was hard—people failed her class, a lot!—but she always looked for ways to give partial credit, find a point here, a few points there. So you could fail her class but still have so much respect and reverence for her and just like her so much that you weren’t even that mad. You knew if there’d been a way to pass you, she would have. My mom said yes to whatever she could.
She was the same way at home. Growing up, if the neighborhood kids wanted to go to the movies, I always volunteered her to take us. When I was in youth theater and rehearsals ran late—which they often did, an hour late or longer—she’d just sit in the car and patiently wait. An hour. Dang. As if she had nothing better to do! And when I was a freshman in college and I wanted to visit my boyfriend in New York City and my father was just like No—because we were going to stay in a hotel and it was obvious there’d be sex—she was down for it.
She was all about me experiencing life. And she delighted, delighted, in buying me clothes. That was a thing. If Macy’s was having a big sale, then let’s go together and get you some stuff. She just loved doing things that would bring me joy.
She had a heart valve replacement in November 2004, and it did not go well. She ran into a lot of complications. Then we discovered that there was an infection that had gone undetected. They tried to clear it with antibiotics, but in the end the only solution was to go back and re-do the valve replacement.
And during that period before the final surgery, when we were trying to get the antibiotics to work, my husband and I found out I was pregnant with our first child. So my mom and I went online to shop, and she bought me this shirt. I’ve purged my closet of all the clothes I cannot wear, except this. I can’t button it—it’s still a size 12 and I’m not—but it’s the last thing my mom ever bought me and everything it meant to her is what it means to me.
—Lisa Toppin
Lisa Toppin, EdD, is a human-resources executive with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. She has led this work with firms including Charles Schwab and LPL Financial and is currently global head of DEI for Illumina.