Choice
A tear rolled down my cheek as I read the last page of the book. My heart breaks for the Walls children.
My old high school classmate and good friend, Jeanne Salunga, suggested I read Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I haven’t been reading a lot of books lately. With the nature of my work, I hardly have functioning eyeballs at the end of the day. That’s why I stick with magazines. Right now, I’m into “Women’s Health,” which features healthy-looking women that don’t send me into a deep depression.
Going back to Glass Castle, I was able to borrow a copy from the public library. It must really be a good book. I had to submit a hold request so the library can reserve it for me as soon it is returned.
Glass Castle is a true story of a woman whose nomadic life as a child was fraught with unspeakable poverty. She described how they would often go hungry. At 5, she and her brother discovered the treasures that the dumpster could bring and rejoiced each time they found half eaten chocolate bars and moldy sandwiches. She also wrote about sleeping in cardboard boxes during the cold, cold winters in a dilapidated house that had no heating or insulation. What is different about her story is that the poverty was inflicted on her and her siblings by her non-conformist parents, whose idea of rearing children bordered on madness. Page after page, Walls catalogued the nightmares that were her childhood. Amazingly, even when she found out later on that her mother owned lands that could have brought them millions of dollars and a comfortable life, there is no bitterness.
My greatest takeaway from this memoir is the reminder that life is what we make it. There is no place for self-pity or finger-pointing. Jeannette Walls’ parents stood, with conviction, by the life they chose for themselves. And they were happy. The children were not, so that one by one, they escaped that life and made new ones for themselves. It was a decision they made and they took steps to make it happen.
There are times when I question myself why I stay in a foreign land. Why I endure the loneliness of being away from family and friends. Why I put up with being a second class citizen. Then I am reminded. This is the life I chose for me.
