- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 20/Jul 07:02

In her shoes

I recently asked a few males if they would like, for one day, to experience being female. Answers were “yes” or “no” – for various reasons – with some feeling that women have it hard because they endure a range of abusive experiences (sexual and otherwise). I will share one response from a friend, a well-known theatre and film practitioner. The following are his words, typed rapidly by me as I listened over the phone: “I had thought about that many times when I hear women speak about their experiences…particularly my mother. Over the years she always shared stories with me about her experiences. We had a very good relationship, very strong and close. Hers was not an easy life… “She would quietly make statements about things and situations, but she was not one to describe in affluent (sic) terms. She did it very simply, but her stories were poignant. Because of the way she described things and the simplicity with which she would recount particular things that happened in her life, I wondered what it would have been like to be in her shoes. “As a young man at the time, trying to fit into my mother’s shoes and her life and how it turned out...I don’t know if I would have understood what really took place and how she responded to things. Because I don’t know what it is like to be a woman. I could only judge it from my experiences as a young boy, growing into a teen and into manhood. It would be skewed. But I will tell you what I felt... “Growing up, my mother was a very quiet, simple, almost self-effacing child. She grew up in a country environment...so it was always that young girls would be demure and quiet. She would keep to the house, do the housework and just ‘behave sheself,’ so to speak. [caption id="attachment_1167536" align="alignnone" width="541"] -[/caption] “But my mother, growing up, saw the world through the eyes of the cinema…because she used to like to go there. It was her only form of entertainment and escape back then. She would go and see all these actresses we now recall with awe – Lena Horne and…I cannot remember a lot of them right now. “She would admire these young people who got a chance to do something with their lives. Because there she was, a country girl, just learning to cook, clean, wash – and it wasn’t with the best of facilities. It was a matter of going down to the river with a bucket, coming back up with that bucket full of water, holding your skirt up…and she was small of stature and frail. “But because of the circumstances and how she grew up, she had to do work...from young she had to learn to fetch water. Not easy to do, but it was how they gained water at the time. “Then there was the idea that young girls don’t have to go to school. If they decide they need you to stay home to clean and cook, you must stay home and do that. But the boy children would go to school. “She got a lot of licks growing up. And she was small. Even when I grew up and was a big man, she was still small. Imagine her going through that abuse – physical, social, educational. “But she had a mission and wanted to be a film actress. She had that in her all those years, but never had a chance to make it happen. “So when she went to the cinema she would sit there and imagine herself to be on the screen…and would walk out imagining she was the next Dorothy Dandridge. That is something she was never able to fulfil. “But I don’t know if that is something that passed onto me – that passion she had for film and cinema. Today that is the passion I have. I am my mother’s dream.” I shared this response because I found it poignant and fascinating – a story that would make a great movie in itself...one that his mother might have enjoyed viewing in her day If you are a man reading this, try spending a day “in a woman’s shoes.” Not literally, of course – unless you want to.   The post In her shoes appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.