"This is a good sign,"
I thought when a message came to me from my daughter, who had stopped speaking to me.
I read the message.
"You have to read this book," she said. "The mother reminds me so much of you."
The book was a memoir, a best seller translated into many languages, a "Tell All" -- the sordid, sad, awful things a child can survive.
Ok. This was not a good sign.
It was a BAD SIGN.
".... a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family."
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
First, I looked for the good things. Mary Walls is a free spirit, zany, imaginative, never dull.
But. She's an artist who takes her work very seriously. Sadly, she her career is derailed by having to care for her four children. In one scene, she has collapsed on the sofa, sobbing, because the inconvenience of all these kids wanting her time and attention has kept her from her artistic endeavors.
The father is a real piece of work. Brilliant man, but tormented by demons (it seems he was molested by his own mother and is in denial about it but damaged, psychologically).
The horrible neglect! Oh, there were good scenes and happy memories, and books, lots of books. The kids were as brilliant as their parents. Their parents didn't provide food, but they provided stories and knowledge and lots of library books. Dirt-poor, underfed, under-estimated by new teachers, these kids were exceptional!
Jeanette Walls became a best selling author!
Here's the thing:
However awful these parents were, Jeanette forgave them.
She loved them. Unconditionally.
The kids would work and earn money for groceries. The dad would steal the money and get drunk.
Jeanette's sister, the oldest child, moved to New York as a teenager, living in the city, on her own.
Jeanette left home early and moved in with her sister and soon began earning a paycheck too. Something their father could never sustain for long. Their mom would get work, but the dad would blow her paychecks on drink, not food or adequate housing for the kids, who at one point live in a house with no indoor plumbing, no shower, no toilet - and this goes on for a long time, in the 1970s, in a time when it was unthinkable to live like this.
[Both grandmothers are alive, and financially secure, but they do not help. Rex Walls will just blow any money they offer as support, so they let the five kids suffer all kinds of neglect.]
Each of the five siblings, one by one, moved to New York to escape the unstable home life with their parents. The youngest was not even an adolescent yet when they took him in, too.
What did the parents do?
They found their way to New York and tried to move in with the kids who were trying to escape them.
The parents were homeless, Dumpster-diving derelicts.
When I closed the book, I searched online for more information about the family. The awful mother? After so many years, Jeanette took her in. She and her partner lived in a house with enough land for a separate cottage for her mom to live in. Her mom died with this daughter close at hand, caring for her, despite all the ways her mom had failed to care for her children.
What an act of forgiveness and mercy.
Months ago, I started a review of this book, right here at Hive, intending to post in the books community. I could not get any farther than this:
How can anyone's memoir be of such interest to anyone, it makes the New York Times Best Seller list - for 260 weeks?
Published in 2005, "The Glass Castle" also became a movie starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts, and Woody Harrelson.
Of all the memorable and quotable lines in the book - this one, for example -
This is the one that really stayed with me:
"You know, it's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do,"
says the brother.
"Now, no recriminations," says the eldest of the four.
Today, 2-January 2024, I will keep going with this review.
One thing I can say of my own childhood: the food was good. We never went hungry.
We may have hungered for our dad's esteem, craved his praise, longed for his approval - but the food was good!
Unlike the Walls family, we were rooted to one place, a rural community where generations had held onto the home place and some had "Century Farm" signs posted at their driveways.
We all have our stories. The stories that make up our life. Some of us dwell on the "bad" things, while others remember only the good times.
Most of us romanticize the past.
Where exactly on this scale Jeannette Walls' story falls is debatable, but the facts are that her life story is the foundation for a best-selling book and now a high-profile movie.
The Christmas chapter is famous for the father who had no money to buy presents for the kids, so he took each one out under the night sky, one-on-one, and told them to pick out a star, and it would be their own, and this gift would last forever, long after all the other kids had their toys worn out and broken.
source: collegemoviereview.com
source: https://thehousethatlarsbuilt.com/
Way to put a positive spin on it!
Scene after scene in this novel is harrowing and heartbreaking.
These kids turned out well, except the youngest, who became a drug addict. (By now, I trust she is in recovery. I haven't searched online.)
Study Guide: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (SuperSummary)
FOOD is a whole other topic.
Like my own mom and my dad's mother, I made sure our kids were well fed.
Cooking, baking, inviting friends over for dinner, creating favorite recipes - this is an art, as worthy an art as painting some landscape or writing a story.
Even though I had aspirations as a novelist and artist, I put the kids first, always, and put my own interests last. It's what mothers do, right? All too soon, they grow up and leave home.
@owasco could write whole books about food, the memories we make with our cooking, the recipes we hand down for generations. Some people hate cooking. I get it. We have to feed our children, though, even if we'd rather do anything else but shop for groceries (or garden and can and raise chickens) and cook and wash dishes.
I really cannot dwell on this another minute.
Some parents can be truly awful, yet their kids forgive them and love them unconditionally.
#Forgiveness and #Reconcilation are topics for another day.
photo source: 'The Glass Castle' Author Jeannette Walls On Reconciling with Her Once-Homeless Mother
Thank you @mariannewest and all the Freewrite team for this excellent pastime: FREEWRITING and daily prompts, and community of readers who encourage and support each other!
2 January 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2605: bad sign
Good sign: she's speaking to me! Bad sign: what she's saying is worse than the Radio Silence.
Ouch, I would disinherit and excommunicate the offending daughter immediately!:)
As my father was very fond of quoting...'How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.'
The book sounds like one I would never read, but could probably write:)
Edit: Looks like @owasco and I have some telepathy thing going on:)
She is positively asking for it, as I see it. Then her fantasy becomes real, and her cognitive dissonance will abate some, a quick, but temporary, fix.
I think of you both very often. Here we are, three avid freewriters back in the day, hanging out together again.
Thank you - and thank you for this:
How did I fall so far from the freewritehouse?
Thank you for reading and commenting! You - @owasco, @deirdyweirdy, @myjob, all of you - are THE BEST!!
@owasco, no, I have not read HOUSEKEEPING, nor the memoir by another famously abused author, "Change Me into Zeus's Daughter: A Memoir" by Barbara Robinette Moss, and yes, I do remember reading that the first daughter of Rex and Mary Wall moved to NYC, followed by Jeanette, then the next sibling, and they rescued the little brother from the parents and raised him as well - and then the parents show up, wanting to move in with the kids, but then the parents end up homeless and dive in Dumpsters ...
Please do write again, @owasco. Why do you and I both find writing more arduous and less of a flow of thoughts and ideas than it once was...????
I seriously worry about dementia. Putting thoughts together, coherently, logically, is getting harder all the time. MUST KEEP WRITING to stave off #BrainRot, #dementia!!!!
So much catching up to do.....!!!!
What a gripping, earnest review. You've made me curious to read it. I think there's certainly a danger in locking away personal ambitions (particularly creative ones) for the sake of the kids as I've seen quite a few of those parents end up resenting their offspring.
I also think that increasingly, our society is angled towards polarity (even inside a single family) rather than unity. It's important to remember the good things a parent does since none are perfect and those too often get overlooked.
You nailed it: these days, POLARITY is more common than family unity, it seems.
Therapists keep telling clients that forgiveness does not require reconciliation: that we can forgive but not allow our offenders to ever again be a part of our lives. REMOVE them.
Ohhh THANK YOU @honeydue! So often, the offended ones, the PTSD victims, have their own failings and flaws, and quite often, they are not above recrimination themselves, but they stand in judgment and uphold others to a much higher standard than they hold themselves. Because, #ego. Because, we are #blind to our own failings. I can look back to my younger days and see that I was a jerk, but at the time, I was totally entitled to my feelings. And that's another new buzzword: therapists saying you are #allowed to feel anger, allowed to set boundaries.
I was indoctrinated with Christian love and forgiveness, and the idea that God loves even the very worst, most depraved, most evil humans, and we all must love one another and see that we are all one and ....
Yeah....
Thanks again for reading and commenting!
I read this. It was compelling. Reminded me of @deirdyweirdy's stories about her own parents.
EXCEPT FOR YOUR BRILLIANCE, YOU ARE NOTHING LIKE THAT MOTHER!
In your case, it seems to me, that it is the other way around. C's childhood was one of extreme neglect? Is that how C generally hands out compliments, by comparing you to terrible, minimally charming, mothers? I think I would have blocked her email. I am very angry about this!
I don't remember the book this way. Didn't the kids try to help them, but the parents refused? They preferred being homeless?
Have you read House Keeping? I just finished it. Similar story about transcience, and what it is, but we are privy to the child's thoughts. Very interesting! Hard to read, because the thinking is so, so so... Idk what it is. Not linear, like mine though. Deep! Insightful! Chimerical! I might read it again to get more in her head.
Happy New Year! I miss you in these parts! Maybe I'll write a freewrite to celebrate. They no longer come easy to me. It's depressing.
My middle child does acknowledge her childhood was one of privilege, and that I encouraged my kids and nurtured their talents and interests, and all was well, until college...
Never did I lie around sobbing "My kids keep me from my art!" (or writing)
Always, I celebrated their many talents and achievements, and I did not nag them or guilt trip them or punish them for the D- in Chemistry (my sister would ground her kids for a month for anything less than an A in any subject) .... I was much too easy on the kids ... which is the worst kind of parent (or one of the worst kinds).
"If you don't love my husband, you don't get to love our kids"
Well that's a whole other kettle of fish to fry (or dump into the ocean, never look back).
COOKING
I would love to inspire a post from you, Chef Owasco, about the priceless gift of COOKING ..
How food defines a family, a culture...
How Mary Walls was "allowed" to hate cooking, but to fail to feed her children.... no no no....
What possible good things about Mary Walls might my daughter have seen in this memoir? She never said.... and I cannot guess.
Why is that none of his doing? He's an very hatefilled person. But you have to love him anyway, or your grandchildren lose you?!! It's so warped Carol. I'm so sorry.
I remember seeing some good in Mary, in her intellect. And I think I found her charming, erudite. Again, much like @deirdyweirdy's parents. Scholars, readers, ingenious. I don't remember any specifics.
I tried to write a freewrite today, but nothing publishable came out. So disappointing! I have not been able to do it for a long time. Here's a tiny bit of what I wrote today:
Ohhhh but I love your freewrite - it reminds me of a Billy Collins poem!
David Demro has just published his second poetry book. This one:
Please keep writing!
You and I are in the same boat, somewhere at sea with no Muse communicating with us. Your Muse was always there for you in the past - lasso her, drag her back into your life!!!
Mine... my Muse is like my sisters and nieces, who get annoyed by me and give me the Silent Treatment. :)
Anywhere Imaginable by David Demro
I love both of those poems!!! Much much better than mine! Congrats to Demro for publishing. I'm sure it's a great book, I'll have to get it. He's a relative who values you.
I try pretty often, but it's like pulling teeth. Awful. And very strange, because I had no problem at all, astounded myself regularly, for a few years. Maybe it's hormonal.
No, no, not "much better" than your poems - it's precisely because yours are THAT GOOD that I thought of them!!!
This silencing of the Muse, this concerns me. Is it part of turning 60 (or more)?
Is it part of the Empty Nest syndrome?
May your voice come back, stronger than ever - Edgar and Elsie and all your fun, zany characters live on and await you being there to open the door. Usher them back onto the stage. We miss them!
Perhaps C feels guilty about having had a priviledged life, and has rewritten it to make her more comfortable, and more palatable to that creep she married. Poor thing. She is in his thrall. Poor kids, too. C is teaching them to reject mothers, so they are bound to do that to her, too. Hopefully she won't find some way to blame you for that.
Teaching their children that it's ok to banish family members who don't live up to their expectations -
Will it come back to bite them -
Ironically, this middle child acknowledges that she was well cared for, indulged, supported, encouraged in every way, and yes, spoiled.
"Nice" parents are the worst kind.
A little deprivation and a lot of hard work go a long way toward building character.
Your Aunt Jane may have been on the harsh side, but what a great teacher she was, an host of so many happy lake outings! Thank you for your empathy and support, @owasco!!
haha Aunt Jane was very often red in the face pissed off and yelling about something. My father stopped speaking to her at some point, and for years. He wasn't the most placid person either, so they regularly got into really bad fights about small stuff. Her second husband was exceptionally annoying. Even my mother couldn't stand him. But she was generous and loyal, for her whole life. Just difficult because she was so volatile. We all walked on eggshells around both her and my father.
You aunt was not a spinster aunt, like mine - just childless - I got that wrong. Two husbands? How did I not see (or remember) that!
Is it just last-century families, or certain countries and cultures, e.g. India, Greece, Italy, anything Hispanic or Asian, that has family LOYALTY above all?
Is it just 21st C Americans who decree "My mom is toxic; I'm removing her from my life," and from her grandkids?
Another question.... how much have you traveled in Greece?
This wedding in July .... (check your email if you wanna know more).
If I go, I have to drive five hours or fly (which takes about as long!) to the nearest big airport, and from there, fly to Athens (or maybe to Rome, as one relative is doing, and from Rome to Athens).
Traveling to Greece takes roughly two days for me, each way.
The ceremony, reception, and beach day are all more than four hours from Athens.
Church (ceremony)
Ag. Nikolaou, Volos 382 21
Reception
Portaria, 370 11, Greece
Beach Day at Pelion
.... after the wedding, we all spend the day at Potistika
All this would be a lot just for me, not to mention my elderly mother, who would never say "That would be too much for me to endeavor to do." So, I not only have to fly to Greece, I have to make sure my dear old mum survives the flight too (how many different airports??) .... in the heat and humidity of July... and the $$$$ is not even the biggest concern.
I sent you an email
What a profound and poignant reflection on “The Glass Castle”! It's admirable how she managed to find beauty in those complicated memories and how, despite it all, she maintained a connection with her parents. Thank you for sharing your experience!
Thank YOU, Jessuses, for reading and commenting!
It's a mystery to me - how forgiving some people can be, and how punitive or uncharitable (harsh) others can be.
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