In Their Shoes: In Their Shoes

Prologue

«Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask notgood-Jortune, I am myselfgood fortune. . . . I need nothing . .. Strong and content I travel the open road.)) Song of the Open Road - Walt Whitman 1the mid-1990s, the actor Peter O'Toole, promoting his autobiography, told a reporter: "I have been on a journey , without a compass." A man typically sails off, into the unknown. Yet, in the 1940s, when I embarked on my journey I carried the burden of the known: it was known that woman has always been man's dependent. It was known a woman will find it easier to submit to convenience than work for liberation. Living as a black maid in Mississippi and working in Los Angeles as "Bessie Yellowhair," a Navajo Indian, I quickly discovered the truth that Goethe spoke: we tend to become what the majority judge us to be. Women of my generation were programmed to become enslaved, to resign ourselves to our lot without attempting to take any action. I chose, in Whitman's phrase, "to take to the open road." In addition to an early support system, with some builtin role models close at home - I admired my mother, my older sisters - I list as the second most important ingredient of my life: the place where I was born. The high 1 2 In Their Shoes plains of West Texas had space - and stars I could see at night. My father on warm nights said, "Let's sleep outdoors ." We children made pallets and far into the night he talked of his adventures, as my eyes looked to the firmaments , all that was eternity. Later on, I took this sense of space, of openness, with me. I learned to reject what the world at large might seek, the known, established way. On my journey, to be me, someone I might like to live with, I kept making discoveries of what I did not want in life: I did not want an accumulation of money as my main priority, nor did I want to settle for convenience or comfort. Rather I sought the liberty of experience, and taking that liberty I could roam "the open road" to faraway places and know within myself other continents. Not wanting a frozen face or a set identity for all time, I gave myself the freedom to wear many masks. I sought to be open to life, open to men and women of all colors, creeds and on all economic and social levels. Like Whitman, I am many persons in one. I feel that I am part black, part Bessie Yellowhair, part Mexican wetback ; to put it in Whitman's grand phrase, "I contain multitudes ." No one knows the recipe for happiness or truth. In attempting to fashion my truth, my goal was never to strive for "happiness" as such; rather I was aiming for another goal, attempting to gain possession of myself. I have lived a life with greater freedom - and I am convinced with more fun, more laughter, more adventures than countless men, and I envy no woman, no man. I have lived, for much of my life, with open arms and few if any regrets. If! had to do it all over again, I'd take a ticket and go! Mistakes and all, all the tears, all the laughter, striking against those known factors as regards women, carrying a suitcase packed with faith and casting myselfwillingly into the hands of fate, finding it as good a provider as any. ...