The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

This is going to be on the short side, and while I should be going straight to sleep, I have to make this transition from end of book to the mundane (have I mentioned I like that word?).

I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and I had to take a deep breath. This was a toughie for me. I spent the good first half of the memoir shaking my head and wondering whether I really wanted to keep reading through this dysfunctional family. I kept wanting the Department of Children and Families to go in and swoop the four kids away from those reckless parents. But then again, it wouldn't have left as much of an imprint, I think. By the end of the memoir, I want to know what happens and I'm rooting for Jeannette and her siblings to get out of that oppressive hole.

The Glass Castle is certainly a memoir about acceptance. Where Eat, Pray, Love contained a self-conscious, woe-is-me tone, Walls writes without blame. She is matter-of-fact, here is what happened, and she doesn't succumb to lamenting her childhood. It proves how strong she really is.

It's also a memoir about love, in a dysfunctional, different kind of way. It astounds me that two brilliant people like her parents could be so irresponsible. I have an almost-three-year-old son and I could never imagine doing the things Walls's mom did. I shook my head many times during this past week, while I read her memoir. I shook my head in incredulity.

I brought out my imaginary pom-poms, though, when she finally had enough and told her mom and dad off, and when she and her sisters and brother broke free. The parents became the children and the children the parents. Sometimes it's more obvious than others, and in The Glass Castle it certainly was obvious.

But the end. Oh the end. The part when her dad asks to speak to her and, in the same call, asks for a bottle of Vodka - that part reminded me of my dad. Not because of the alcohol, because my dad didn't drink, but because my dad's addiction to smoking was just as bad as her dad's with alcohol. In the end, I gave up fighting his smoking habits and indulged him. It killed him indirectly, in the end, but I still indulged him.

So I definitely recommend this memoir, but it's not for the faint of mind. Those with children, beware, because it has you clutching on to your own kids more dearly. I'm still amazed that after going through such a childhood, Jeannette Walls came out brilliant and overcame the set backs in which she was born.

Memories

My mother and I used to play Parques, much like the American Parcheesi, but the Colombian version. Mom and I would sit cross legged on our sofa and begin the game. This is back when I wasn't a teenage yet and my mom still had energy and hadn't been dragged down by my dad's illnesses. We were happy then, and we laughed.

The games would happen sometimes during the week nights, but more often than not, our Parques game night happened on Saturday nights, after dinner, and while we watched Sabado Gigante back when it was still somewhat decent and women were three-quarters clothes (as opposed to the now three-quarters naked women pushing their Latin sexuality on the audiences). Dad never played; this was Mom's and my game. I would go to the closet and bring out the box with the vibrant greens, yellows, reds and blues. Mom would sit on the sofa, trimming her cuticles while she waited. I'd set up the game and chose the color - Mom would always let me choose the color - and then we'd start. I won often, and sometimes I think she'd let me win. We would talk and laugh and enjoy that time.

Then Dad stopped sleeping and started taking some sleeping pills sent from Colombia. Our games stopped around then. We were in the 2-bedroom apartment with the den. My godparents had died in the 1990 plane crash in New York, and we had left Westchester for good. I was a new face, with glasses and braces, in a new school, secluded to my studies. That's when Dad started breaking more glasses, and when the screaming became ordinary. My mom and I would go walking now; no more Parques games because something would set my dad off and the board would fly, the game pieces would get lost, and my mom would cry.

I miss those games.

I remember

I remember a collage of my father's stories. I don't remember then in complete form, although I wish I did. But I do remember some pieces.

When my father was young, I want to say twelve, although I don't know if this is exact or not, my father started smoking homemade cigarettes. He and his cousin would hide in the sotano of his home and there, by a motorcycle, would roll up some cigarettes. What exactly he used, I'm not sure. I wish I would've asked him before he died, though. There's so much I would ask now.

I remember another story. He was a priest now with a disdaining vice. This vice could get him kicked out of the seminary in a heart beat. He was a smoker. He would hide his cigarettes in his sotana and would sneak in a smoke whenever possible.

I remember him always smoking. He smoked Winston cigarettes or a Colombian brand. No other cigarettes would do. He wouldn't smoke in the house, though; my mom had put a stop to that when I was young in our Westchester home. He would go outside. Of course, back when he drove, he would smoke in his cars: the beat-up old vomit-green Chrysler or the two-door once-white stick shift car. I don't remember the make or model of that one. Los carros viejos, my mom used to call them. The old cars. My dad only like the old stuff. That was good stuff. Give him old cars, old furniture, old appliances, and he was happy. He didn't like new things - new stuff didn't last, wasn't made well. He was an old man even then, clinging on to a past he could never get back. I wonder if being a priest made him that way, or perhaps, he was a priest because he was that way.

What I remember the most, though, was him in his wheel-chair, post amputation. He had gone almost three months without a cigarette. My mom and I whispered behind his back that he was finally cured. He had even stopped asking for them. Then, when he was let out, the first thing he said to my mom was: "Ole, bring me my cigarettes." And he kept on smoking. If the doctors asked him, he'd get angry, saying, "What do they care anyway!" And he stopped wanting to go to the doctors because then he'd have to tell them the truth.

My mom took to restricting his smoking. He now received an allowance of three cigarettes a day, and an extra one for special occasions. After breakfast, lunch and dinner, he would call out to my mom: "Ole, my cigarette!" while he put his shirt on (he was always shirt-less at home). And my mom would sigh, slowly rise from the sofa, go to her closet where she hid them in a place only she knew (she had to change them a few times because my dad would look for them and, occasionally, find them) and grudgingly bring him his prize. He would chuckle, place the cigarette in his front shirt pocket along with the lighter, and roll his way out the front door. He would stay there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, contemplating every inhale of nicotine, and then he'd slowly roll back inside, the scent of smoke lingering around him. Everything about him smelled like smoke.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and, in simplest terms, I loved it – but it’s complicated love. I bought the book right before my Disney cruise, hoping to spend time rekindling my romance with the written word. I haven’t read much lately that didn’t have to do with essays, stories, poems, and even a graphic memoir – all for school. For work. Pleasure reading has been nonexistent. I think the last reading I did just because was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and even that book I will be using in my classes. I started reading Isabel Allende’s The Sum of my Days, in Spanish, but that is sitting now in my bookshelf, the Tinkerbell bookmark sitting about one-third of the way, collecting dust. It’s not happening.

So I decided to indoctrinate myself into my summer “vacation” with a memoir (my genre of choice) that could balance between chick-lit and seriousness, romance and truth, dreams and reality, humor and spirituality. I think I’ve hit the mark with Eat, Pray, Love.

I had received numerous, mixed reviews from friends who’ve read it (and a somewhat Sparks Notes report from a student) and I was intrigued. But I hadn’t really read what it was about. Not really. I envisioned a plot similar to that of Under the Tuscan Sun, only transcending three countries.

My reading journey began a few days before we left for Cape Canaveral; I just couldn’t wait to start reading. And I was disappointed – at first. I started reading, expecting a literary fluency akin to Madeleine Blais’s Uphill Walkers, and I was disappointed. The language was okay. The writing was at times clichéd. At one point I felt I was reading my students’ papers. It was a disaster.

But so was Gilbert’s life at that point. I think there was a correlation. During the time she spent in Italy, in pursuit of culinary pleasures, the writing was superficial and basic. But there was humor, and her story surrounded me, transported me, and soon I was forgetting about whether the metaphor was silly or whether her description was basic, and I was immersed in her experience. When I finished the first third of the book, aboard the Disney Wonder in the Bahamas, I was sad to say good-bye to Italy. I love Italy, and my desire to learn Italian intensified.

And then Gilbert took me to an ashram in India, a place I have never thought of visiting – ever. I actually have very limited knowledge of Eastern meditation and religions. And when I say very limited, I literally mean very, very limited. I know of Hinduism and Buddhism, but that’s it and on the surface level. Gilbert’s account in this ashram in a remote village of India, and her explanations of spirituality, captivated me more than the pleasure of eating pasta in the many historic Italian cities and towns. It left me yearning and wanting that spiritual peace. And her way of making sense of the diversity of religion and how it’s all the same – and how in that ashram, people of all religions were there in order to get closer to their Gods (Christian, Jewish, Muslim – it didn’t matter) – it made sense to me. Actually, a lot of what she said during her spiritual journey made sense to me. Not all, but a good amount. We’re all in this search for divinity, for spiritual and religious belonging, whether we want to admit it or not. We need something, and what we call that something varies. We are so focused on our location in the map of society that we become lodged on this canvas, without realizing that it’s not flat, but round, ever existing, ever changing, ever merging into itself. We have the freedom to move – yet we don’t. It’s an interesting concept. This section also made me think of the juxtaposition of those two terms we sometimes use interchangeably: religion and spirituality. They’re not interchangeable. They’re different. One can be uber religious and not find spiritual peace. Crazy concept, I know, but think about it. We all know someone who prays every day, attends religious services all the time, and proclaims to be “holier than thou” but at closer inspection, the spiritual storm that exists in this person’s heart is tumultuous and it’s seen in actions, in words, in subtle hints that alert us to the true spiritual nature of this person. He is not at peace with himself, his life. She is not at one with her creator, whoever that creator is for her. Different words for the same thing – this is what I took from Gilbert’s experience in the Ashram in India. Let go and let God is what I learned at an Emmaus retreat. Let go and let God, in different words, is what Gilbert learned in the second section of the book.

And her writing was changing skins, just as she was changing, rising through meditation from her worldly suffering to the divine.

The concept of “same-same,” as her Balinese Medicine Man, Ketut, says it, is brought to the center in the third and final section of Eat, Pray, Love. In Indonesia, Gilbert attempts to find balance in her life. After four months in Italy searching for pleasure (non-carnal pleasure as she’s on self-imposed celibacy), and after four months in India searching for spirituality, she arrives in Bali equipped with some newfound confidence and ease of being with and by herself. She sets off at figuring out how to combine pleasure and spirituality, and in doing so, stumbles on love.

Her writing style towards the end is different, or maybe I was so engrossed with the story that I forgave. Maybe there was a purpose – write for the masses with humor, especially for women who are hurting – and the style is overlooked. In reading reviews, I saw some call her writing a form of whining, and at times, I agreed. But I think it was needed. When we’re so neck-deep in our own pit of sorrow, it’s hard not to whine. In the beginning of her book, Gilbert was in that place. The wallowing, self-pity, snot-inducing place. By the end of the book, she wasn’t, and her ascension to that place of contentment becomes evident in her writing. It was well done, I think.

In another post, when I have some more quiet time, I'll point out a few passages I absolutely loved - especially one in which Richard from Texas explains his theory about soul mates to Gilbert. It's definitely one of those things that make you pause and ponder.

So now I want to read Committed which, lucky for me, was recently published. It starts where Eat, Pray, Love left off, and I can’t wait. I’m also looking forward to the movie, starring Julia Roberts, that’s due out this summer.

Finding purpose in ramblings

I finally have the time to write. I've been sitting here at Starbucks, after dropping off L at daycare, sipping my Caramel Macchiato, and listening to the arrangement of 80's and 90's hip hop that's reverberating from the two speakers. I had told myself that today was my day to write; instead, though, I've been arranging my online classes, replying to emails, grading the first few essays: in other words, doing anything but creative work. I feel somewhat useless, actually. I don't know where to start, or how or why. What's the purpose?

Then I remember - the purpose. To write. Just to get this crazy, mixed-up world out in writing so that I can make sense of it, and of myself. So I don't wallow in grief when the news of a child found murdered or molested comes. So I don't succumb to the nasty switch of PMS. So I can speak out, even if my audience is a corner of nowhere, a back-lit screen, or a lined paper. I don't care. I have things to say, even if I'm not sure what those things are.

I think things happen for a reason (cliche, yes, I know). I wasn't meant to get into the MFA program. It's been hard enough combining motherhood with work and writing. I'm not there yet. I don't have the leisure many MFA students have. I can't just pick up and form a part of this secret society where only those who belong can become successful novelists, essayists, poets, etc. I am a mom, wife, daughter, teacher. I have multiple responsibilities, and while I need to write, and I need a good writer's group to help me improve, I am limited right now. This is just a reality I need to come to terms with, and as I do, I will be much healthier.

So in the meantime, I'm reading and, yes, writing, too; only I'm writing without pressure. No deadlines, no stress. I'm just writing. I do want to submit a few things, but we'll see how that goes. I don't know how much I actually want to do. I am also looking at possibilities of online writing courses. UCLA Writer's Extension seems to have a fabulous certificate program and the best part is that it's online! It's help. Another thing I'm considering is forming an online critique group of writers who are facing the same constraints I am. And I'm writing about being a mother to an energetic almost-three-year-old who swears he can do everything himself. I see the same defiance and yearning for independence in him that I have. And I love it.

So for now, I sit here at Starbucks and, in between writing, I watch people and, unwillingly eavesdrop. The three Census workers have left. They were loud, but their conversation interested me. Somewhere in this insane county, some lady snatched the paperwork from a Census worker, slammed the door shut, only to later reopen it and throw it, crumpled, back at them. They were instructed by the boss man -a fifty-something-year-old man, balding save some peaks of white strands- to call the police immediately should something like that happen. This same man was here yesterday with two women, Colombian - I conversed briefly with them when I heard the beloved singing of the Paisa accent. I'm now assuming they were Census workers, too.

But they've left. Starbucks is empty. Only the employees, counting change, and I, half-hidden in my corner below the speaker, are here.