Jeannette Walls: The Glass Castle
The Glass Castle was a hugely popular best seller in the USA, and it must have been while I was gone. A part of me remembers reading a little bit about it and deciding it wasn’t my kind of book, but after reading Half Broke Horses, I had forgotten what the subject matter was and was excited to have another Jeannette Walls book I could read.
Big mistake. This book is nothing like Half Broke Horses.
Or maybe it is. Maybe what I loved about Half Broke Horses was the voice of an amazing woman, and maybe what kept me reading The Glass Castle is the voice of an amazing child who tells a heart breaking story. Or maybe it isn’t so heartbreaking, because the children survive. They are scarred and damaged, but never so damaged or loony or self-deceived as their parents.
I don’t like reading books about kids whose parents don’t take good care of them. Oprah chose a lot of those books in her book club. These books depress me. I cannot imagine how parents can be so self-absorbed, how they can take on the responsibilities of children and then not put those children first. How can they?
The Glass Castle stars the daughter of Lily Casey Smith, who is the mother of Jeannette Walls, and her husband, who is Jeannette’s father. The book opens with little three year old Jeannette proudly cooking up a hot dog. Her mother is busy painting and has told her to find something to eat. Her nightgown catches fire, and she is terribly burned. She spends a long time in the hospital, which ends with her father taking her out in a hurry, bundling her into the car, already loaded with her family, and “doing the skedaddle” which is leaving town just in front of the bill collectors.
This is her life. From time to time, their alcoholic Dad will take a job and bring home some of the paycheck (he drinks and gambles most of it) and when he won’t work, on rare occasion, their mother will take a teaching job, but the kids have to get her out of bed in the morning, have to grade her papers and make her lesson plans. Often there is not enough for the family to eat. They don’t stay in one place; they ‘skedaddle’ before they are evicted for non-payment of rent. They eat cold food – when they eat – because the parents didn’t pay the electric bill.
The Dad is smart, charming and cajoling, and when he is sober, the kids learn amazing things from him, and educated engineer. Unfortunately, he is not often sober. He chases after alcohol and he chases after women; the people in the towns where they live know it and the children learn to know it, too, to their constant humiliation. When he wheedles money off his kids, and promises to repay, he asks “Have I ever let you down?” The answer is so stunningly obvious as to be heartbreaking – Yes. Yes, again and again and again.
The Mother is equally irresponsible. One time, when the family is starving, she is in bed and occasionally goes under the covers, where Jeannette discovers her mother has a chocolate bar hidden that she can eat – while her children go hungry.
The author’s voice is never self pitying, she just lays it all out and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. Each child escapes the family as soon as possible; the children plan and save their money to get out, first sending off the oldest sister, then Jeannette, then the son. They all head for New York, where they find work and support themselves. Like bad pennies, Mom and Dad show up in New York, cadge meals and money and join the ranks of the homeless in New York, going from food pantry to soup kitchen, and diving dumpsters for their worldly needs.
This is not a feel good novel. The good part about it is that children can survive this kind of criminal neglect, and become a successful author as Jeannette Walls has done. I am so glad I read Half Broke Horses first, because her grandmother is such an admirable character, whereas her parents are scum and I just felt so angry when I read the matter-of-fact descriptions of their behavior that I was glad they were not where I could get my hands on them.
I don’t know any parents as bad as Rose Mary and Rex Walls, but I know I believe this – if you choose to marry, and if you choose to have children, know that children require time, and love, and energy, and patience. Know that if you have grand ambitions, or an addiction, or a character flaw, you won’t be able to provide for your children’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs, unless you are willing to sacrifice your own needs and wants. While the children in the book loved their parents, they recognized that their parents were sadly lacking in the parenting roles. The way these children were neglected will make me remember this book for a long time.
Would I recommend it? Yes. It is a gripping book, at times even horrifyingly humorous, as when Jeannette figures out how to find lunch food in the garbage cans when all the other kids have finished eating. It is not a feel-good book. It is a horrifying indictment of self-absorbed, neglectful parents, parents you will love to hate.
If I sound a little overwrought, it’s because I worked with the homeless. We were able to help many, but I also ran into families like this family, families who would prefer not taking any help if it meant they had to play by the rules, you know, rules like “you have to take care of your children.” We had all kinds of classes and forums and mentors to help with learning skills, like feeding children well on a small budget, learning to discipline, simple skills, survival skills.
The problem is that these skills require self-discipline, and many of the parents would rather not take help than have to exercise self-discipline. I saw women who would sacrifice their children for their current boyfriend, a woman who was severely angry with her daughter for reporting a family member had molested her, a man who didn’t want to take a job that would ‘tie him down’ when his family was starving. I saw this, with my own eyes, and there is no way you can MAKE people take good care of their children. You have to ask if the children are better off with these parents, or ‘in the system.’ Not a pretty choice.
This book, too, is on Amazon.com. Reading it is like watching a disaster on CNN. You don’t want to believe it is happening and you can’t look away.
Listmaker
“Why are you smiling?” AdventureMan asked as he read the Sunday paper on our bed, the ceiling fan whirling madly to cool him down after his post-Church yard work – feeding the birds, shoveling up all the birdseed hulls, putting recycle materials into the compost bin.
I was doing something I do only rarely, changing purses. At the last minute, all in navy, I decided to do the navy purse instead of the tan. Now, back home, I was re-transfering all the important things, and checking pockets for stuff that accumulates and needs to be thrown away.
“I found a list,” I began. “It says:
fruit cake
kick board
book
peanut brittle
photos in frames
calendar
soap”
He laughed. “I know exactly what that was, “he remembered, “my Christmas box.”
More specifically, my tag on the outside of the box reminding me of what was inside when I had to affix a customs tag to send the box to hubby in Kuwait. These days, as I send boxes, I (mostly) no longer have to fiddle with customs tags or leaving the box open until I get to the post office so that customs officers can affirm what I included in the box. Every time I send a box, still, I think of those customs tags and give thanks not to have to do those irksome little steps.
I keep my lists now, in a folder marked, predictably,
-
To Do Lists
This one goes in there. On days when I feel bad about myself, or overwhelmed, I can look at my to-do lists and have a record that my time was not mis-spent. I can see all the little chores and fix-it projects we have finished, all the dinners we have done, house guests we have had . . . These little to-do lists keep track of the little things you do that take up so much time, and then at the end of the year, you ask yourself “where did the time go.” These help me know that I didn’t waste the time, I used the time, a little here, a little there, to bring order out of chaos in our daily existence, to brighten a life, maybe to help others, or to meet a goal I have already forgotten.
Some of the lists, like the moving lists, remind me of God’s gracious hand in helping me to do the things I’ve had to do, and could never have managed without his help. When I read some of them, I almost laugh out loud thinking “I did all that??”
It also reminds me how very happy I am to have AdventureMan back home with me, not far away at Christmas time. 🙂
Did you Tell Him We’re Going Dancing?
I was laughing as I heard AdventureMan talking with his Saudi friend, making a time when they could get together. I knew he had called about tonight.
“Did you tell him we were going dancing?” I laughed as I asked him.
“Uhhh . . . no,” he said.
This is new to us. We are taking dancing lessons, ballroom dancing, at the YMCA. We both had those lessons you take in eighth grade, but we’ve forgotten most of what we learned. I don’t care about going dancing, or fancy dresses, or competitions. I don’t even watch dance stuff on TV; I just don’t care that much. These classes are something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, and it really takes us out of our comfort zones.
We really are having fun. The first lesson – not so much. It is hard work! It doesn’t come naturally, it comes with PRACTICE! Lots of PRACTICE! It’s like fencing lessons, or horseback riding, or karate, or gymnastics – After a while, your body knows what to do, but at the beginning, it can be a little excruciating. As for AdventureMan and I, we mess up a lot, but we laugh a lot too. We are getting better, but best of all we are having a lot of fun. These kinds of things rewire your brains; it may not be easy, but it is good for us.
And I am still laughing, thinking of AdventureMan not telling his friend that he was going dancing with his wife, LOL!
Two Saints of the Church
Here is the prayer given for today in the Lectionary:
PRAYER (traditional language)
Loving God, we offer thanks for the ministries of Edward Thomas Demby and Henry Beard Delany, bishops of thy Church who, though limited by segregation, served faithfully to thy honor and glory. Assist us, we pray, to break through the limitations of our own time, that we may minister in obedience to Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
BISHOPS, 1928, 1957
Delany, Henry Beard [Feb. 5, 1858-April 14, 1928] was the second African American bishop in the Episcopal Church, being elected Suffragan Bishop of North Carolina in 1918. He is probably better known as the father of Sadie and Bessy Delany, authors of the popular book, Having Our Say, which chronicled their lives.
Edward Thomas Demby [Feb. 13, 1869-Oct. 14, 1957] was the first African American bishop in the Episcopal Church. He served his first parish in Mason, Tenn. He became “Suffragan Bishop for Colored Work in Arkansas and the Province of the Southwest” in 1918. His career has been covered in a book, Black Bishop.
As we begin to transition from the Lenten season to the great feast of Easter, my heart takes hope from the courage of those who stood in the face of prejudice and exclusion, and focused on doing their jobs and doing them with grace. I think of how hate blinds us. I think of how Catholics and Protestants slaughtered one another, how Mormons were driven West, how Sunnis and Shiites are clashing in Iraq, how Christians and Moslems are battling to the death, and when I am near to losing hope, I try to focus on how earlier conflicts have almost totally disappeared. We are all believers. We believe in the one true God. We squabble like children over his inheritance.
Anniversary and Punch List
It’s been a year since we bought the house. We had to have it entirely rewired before we moved in, and now, we are so glad we took that time and spent that money; the insurance companies have gotten more and more finicky about insuring houses in Florida. One of the newest causes for non-renewal is aluminum wiring, which is what we had taken out and replaced with copper wiring, not cheap, we can tell you.
We are so glad our contractor made that recommendation. For one thing, we sleep well at night, knowing the wiring is new and well-installed. For another thing, it was good to get it done while we had nothing in the house, and the workers had easy access to everywhere they needed to tear out walls, rewire, put back walls, etc.
Do you make lists? I have a list I made in November, and today I finished off the list. It had unfinished tasks going back to the move-in. You prioritize, you know? Even when you have accomplished the most important things, sometimes it is just too overwhelming to tackle the next thing so you take a break . . . and that break can stretch.
The little plumbing things are all done. Every single one. Wooo HOOOO. The final light fixtures are all up. Woooo HOOOOO! The outside watering system is working, woooo HOOO, and we have a guy helping us restart our lawn – wooo HOOOO!
It’s kind of like having a baby. If you think about all the things that need to be done before you do it, you might have second thoughts. It’s all-consuming, and it can be exhausting, emotionally and physically and financially. Just like having a baby!
And, now that I have come to the end of my punch-list, I would celebrate, except that new things are cropping up – the gutters, the drainage, the driveway, the air conditioning . . . nothing that needs to be done, no emergencies, but all which need some attention, some fine tuning, so that we are not dealing with an unexpected disaster.
It’s not like Trust Towers in Kuwait, where we lived in Fintas, or Al Fardan Gardens in Qatar, where we could just call the management if anything went wrong, and someone would show up to fix it. Now, we have to think about what we want, how much we are willing to pay, and we have to make decisions.
We are waiting for the air conditioning man to come. The electricians have told us that the inside and outside units (the expensive pieces) are fine; it is the thermostat that needs replacing, so we have to have the A/C people replace that. Meanwhile, I think I will sit back and enjoy our new light fixture.
Here is what I love. AdventureMan and I are so often on the same track. We wanted traditional – a crystal chandelier – but we didn’t want elaborate, we wanted simple lines, not a lot of embellishment. When we found this, we both knew it at once – welcome home, new light fixture!
And here is one other thing we love. Through our contractor, we met the best people. The plumber is good, and thorough, and honest. The electricians are good, and hard working, and serious. They are all knowledgeable professionals, people we can trust.
The electrician didn’t want to charge us. He said these were leftover tasks from last year. We insisted – a year later, this is on us, not on them. We fiddled around a whole year looking for what we wanted; it’s not fair to not pay after a whole year.
Sometimes we just feel so blessed, having come to this broad and spacious place, Pensacola.
Ash Wednesday in Pensacola 2011
Luke 18:9-14
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’
(From the Lectionary readings for today)
“I forgot to set my alarm” AdventureMan said, coming down the stairs, “we missed the first service.”
Today is Ash Wednesday, the day Lent begins for Christians. We go to church, the priest puts a cross on our forehead in ash, to remind us “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, that our life here on earth is only temporary, and that our true home is heaven.
It’s easier to believe that in your gut when you are an expat.
My cousin wrote to me, and in his email, he wrote that I write about my own culture the same way I wrote about Germany, about Qatar, about Kuwait – as an expat, as an outside observer. Pensacola is like my foreign assignments; I could live here for twenty years (God willing) and I will never be a native, I will always be from somewhere else, the kind of person about whom others will say “she must not be from around here.” I am guessing I will get more comfortable, more confident, but I will always be not-quite-right among the natives.
And that is how we are supposed to be living here on earth – as people not-quite-right, as people eager to return to our true heavenly home.
Lent in my own country is odd to me, now. In a foreign country, you are accustomed to thinking of yourself as a minority; your differentness makes you more aware or who you are, and what you value. There is a part of me that thinks Lent would be a lot easier if, like Qatar, and like Kuwait, and like Saudi Arabia, religious practices were state enforced, like everyone in the USA fasted at the same time, maybe nobody would sell meat or chocolate or alcohol. And then, I think “but what is the point?” The point is our own sacrifice. Is it a sacrifice if it is enforced from the outside?
I can’t sacrifice cussing in traffic this year. Pensacola traffic, by the grace of God, is nearly non-existent, and it is mellow. I’m not even tempted. I’m trying to figure out what I will sacrifice.
Father Neal Goldsborough at Christ Church Episcopal told us on Sunday how all the children come in from the Episcopal Day School to have the ashes imposed, and how poignant it is for him, and I can’t help but think of all the soldiers he has been with at their death, mere children, children of God, and how he must see the faces of these soldiers in the faces of these tiny children. My heart would weep, even knowing they are on their way home.
“Love Your Enemies and Pray for those who Persecute You”
Today’s reading in The Lectionary is the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus told us many things that turned the world upside down. If we as Christians, truly practiced the teachings of the Christ, what a different world this would be:
Matthew 5:38-48
38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;
40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;
41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.
42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.”
44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?
47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
If YOU were to pray for your enemies, who would you pray for?
I tried it one time, almost as a challenge to God, I didn’t believe it would change anything but I would do it because it was required – and it turned out well – for God. When you pray for your enemy, you open a door for change to happen, unexpected change, miraculous change, transformational change.
As a young woman, I studied power and it’s application, reading books from many cultures on strategies of winning. This gospel summarizes a totally unexpected and wildly successful use of the spiritual power in each one of us, the God-given power to turn evil to good, to bring friendship out of enmity.
So today I challenge you. Is there someone in your life whose very presence makes you miserable? Pray for that person. As often as that person comes to mind, send up a prayer. I challenge you to see what happens in your life.
“We All Have Red Blood in Our Veins”
I joke with my bible study group that God kept sending me back to the Middle East until I ‘got’ what he was trying to tell me. The dilemma now is how do I share this? When my Christian friends see Islam as the great enemy, how do I tell them that some of the best Christians I know are Muslims?
Sunday, at Christ Church in Pensacola, Father C. Neal Goldsborough gave a sermon on loving one another, a “who is my neighbor?” sermon. He is only the second priest I have ever met who mentioned Osama bin Laden, that we have to forgive him and to love him. The first time, it was in a military church, and the gasp was audible. What a courageous priest! Imagine, going among the warriors and telling us we have to love our enemy! Imagine!
Living in the Middle East, living in Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, I was greatly blessed. My friends were of all nationalities, and I learned one great lesson – we all have red blood in our veins, and we all share more similarities than we do differences. I try to texplain to my friends here by telling small stories of my experiences. I blog a little about them. We are all God’s children, and we create needless barriers when we draw lines that say the equivalent of ‘our way is the right way and you way is not.’
This is from today’s Forward Day by Day meditation for today:
Today’s Meditation
Tuesday, february 22
Ruth 1:15-22. Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
During political upheaval and mounting racial tensions, we were having a Bible study at home. A Fijian woman came in great distress. She was from a rural area that grew sugar cane. She had grown up alongside people of another ethnic group. They were her friends. She could not understand why people were being victimized because they were of another ethnic group. She was so disturbed she had to be taken aside. She kept clutching her arm. “We have red blood in our veins. We all have red blood in our veins!” she repeated, weeping.
In the scripture we have the moving words of the widow Ruth to the widow Naomi, whose son Ruth had married. Ruth and Naomi had in common that they were bereaved, but Ruth was a Moabite, whereas Naomi was from Bethlehem. Naomi shows kindness to Ruth, and Ruth proves loyal to Naomi—a loyalty that goes beyond narrow family blood ties.
We are all God’s children. Today I give thanks for strong bonds of friendship. I give thanks for loyal friends who are not of my ethnic group.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Until I sat down to write these reviews (so I can pass these along to friends in Kuwait who I know will read and discuss them 🙂 ) I didn’t realize that the books had so much in common. They both take place in the WWII time frame, and both are told from the point of view of children coming of age in this time. Both are love stories, romantic, parental, community – they have many of the same elements. They both have bullies, and children who steal. They both have wise adult conspirators, mentors and guides.
In The Book Thief, right off you get a chill. One of the main characters in a personification of Death, a tired, weary, cynical Death, but a Death who is fascinated by his humans. When the opening pages are written by Death, you get a feeling that this can’t be good.
And, in the beginning, it is not good. Liesel is on her way . . . somewhere, we don’t know where, on a long train ride, during which her brother dies. They are forced off the train, and her brother is buried in some small village where they are unknown; the grave will probably never be visited. Shortly after, they re-board another train, and when they arrive, Liesel is turned over to a government foster family agency, and she is placed with a rough, uneducated couple in a small village on the outskirts of Germany.
Not far from Dachau.
So many similar elements . . . people at the mercy of their government, and the madness of the politicians and mass hysteria. Bullies, but not just in the schoolyards, here there is also a nationally encouraged group of bullies, the Nazis, and people in every village are encouraged to join the party. The kids join Hitler Youth and practice to become good Nazis.
Except inside each one of us resides a spirit of humanity, and if you let that spirit dominate, you can come into conflict with the party, even if you appear to comply most of the time. Liesel’s foster parents turn out to be a very humane sort. They feel compassion for the Jews marched through their village on the way to the camps, and attempt to give them a little bread, for although they have little to share, they can see that these Jews are starving.
And then, a stranger arrives on the doorstep, the son of a man who saved Liesel’s Papa’s life in the first world war. He is Jewish. He needs a place to be hidden. Liesel’s foster parents take him in and hide him in the basement.
Only after I read the book and read the afterword did I discover this is a book written for young adults, and that makes me laugh, because I am not a young adult, and I enjoyed the book so much. I love books about the triumph of the human spirit, the triumph of good over evil, and the triumph of hope and life over hopelessness. Even Death has a heart, in this book.
I know that there will be one copy of this book in Kuwait; I am leaving it with a friend I know will read it, and I know she will pass it along, because this is a book worth discussing. I hope you are friends with my friend, and that you will get a chance to read it, too!
House Rules by Jodi Picoult
I got it all done – two days before Christmas. Wooo HOOOO, I get the reward, a new book! One I had been eager to read, House Rules by Jodi Picoult. (You can read reviews of other Picoult books by doing a blog search, enter Jodi Picoult in my blog’s search window.)
What I really like about Jodi Picoult is that she writes about really tough situations and exposes our ignorance and ambivalence to us. In this book, she writes about a single mother who is raising two sons, one of whom has Asperger’s Syndrome. He is extremely bright, but lives in a world where he is bombarded by too much sensation. He cannot block out sensory input that we learn to ignore, and some of it – noise, colors – in his case, the color orange – or any change in routine can cause him to spin out of control. Imagine a two year old having a tantrum in a grocery store . . . now imagine an eighteen year old young man having the same tantrum. It helps you see what the Mom is dealing with.
Dad left when the second son was born. “It’s too hard,” he said, and left her to cope with all of it.
She gets child support, while her husband is raising his new family a continent away. She free lances as an advice columnist, and edits from her home to supplement the bare bones family existence. She learns to cope with Jacob’s needs, and she advocates for him fiercely, to be mainstreamed in the school system AND to have some special supports to soothe him when he becomes over-stimulated.
Jacob isn’t a burden, although his need for routine – certain colors for different days of the week, including meals – can be burdensome. Jacob is also very very bright, and obsessed with crime scene forensics. He loves setting up “crime scenes” for his mom to solve and the one bright spot in his daily life is the Crime Busters show which comes on every day at 4:30.
And then, suddenly, a life which is already wobbling turns upside down. Jacob is implicated in the murder of his tutor, a young woman Jacob loved working with, who helped him develop an understanding of how people interact and behave. Those who know Jacob understand his quirks and eccentricities are due to his wiring, but Jacob looks very odd, very threatening and even violent to the outside observer – a nightmare client as a defendant.
It is a GREAT read. Picoult keeps her secrets up to the very end; the book is tightly wired and we are given clues all along the way. The edition I read had both a reader’s guide and an interview with the author at the end. It is NOT cheating to read those first! It gives you good guidance on what the author is trying to say, and what may be significant, while not appearing particularly so.
It gave me a great appreciation for parent’s of children outside the realm of ‘normal.’ It gave me an appreciation for the work and persistence and dedication it takes to try to get a more level playing field for their children.
It the book Jacob has some self-awareness, and compares Asperger’s Syndrome to seasonings, and he believes we all have a dose of Asperger’s Syndrome in our wiring, but that some children get a little extra.
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