The Glass Castle

"Storytellers do not cry over their own stories, only the listers do."

This book almost made me cry, but I didn’t. The picture of that night, how I was telling HY about my stories and her tears were pouring down her cheeks kept coming back to my head. I thought to myself: damn, maybe I am a storyteller!

I remember when I was in IB, my English teacher taught us a lot how to write a commentary on a book. How you should analyze the opening, the ending, how you should pick a theme and highlight everything that is related to the theme, how you should quote it and interpret it.

She’s right about you should pick a theme every time you write a commentary because every book is too darn rich.

This is gonna be real bad commentary if it ever is one, because I do not know what theme to pick about this book; it is too cohesive.

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The author’s dad is an alcoholic, a serious one. He’d spend tons of money buying booze and cannot control himself from drinking. He’d spend three nights at a bar and smashed every furniture when he got home. On the author’s 10th birthday, her dad asked her what he can get her for a gift. He said he would get everything for her if within human possibility. She put up all her courage and asked if he can stop drinking.

His dad did try his best and temperance went on for months. One day, she asked her sister “I wonder what life will be like now”, her sister said “the same, he tried stopping before, but it never lasted”

She replied, “this time it will”

“How do you know?”

“It’s his present to me.”

After all, he went back to booze.

When I was 17, my dad was making a plan for our garden in our new house in Vancouver. Of course, my dad, having all those big plans and wanted to make our garden fancy. All those expensive trees that he had been thinking about, just like the garden that we had back in Guangzhou. But I had one request. I asked him if he could keep the two rose trees that were planted by the previous owner in the garden.

I really love wide roses. During blossom, they have the purest and most vivid colors I can ever image. And they smell like summer. They make me happy. However, my dad could not even recognize which one was the rose tree even though they were right beside him. The next thing I knew was, he changed his entire plan and planted our garden with all roses. Different and every color of roses that I could possibly ask for.

And in the middle of the garden, there were two cherry trees. Beautiful, pale pink cherry trees. Cherry flower was my favorite too.

Nonetheless, we sold the house after a year or so, because of a sudden financial situation.

I have always loved the ocean, especially the Vancouver ones. They are royal blue. My dad bought a second house in Vancouver back then. It was up on the hill, you can see the ocean from almost every corner of the living room and he told everyone his big plan. He said he was going to rebuild the house and there would be big glass windows from the roof to the bottom in the living room, so that we can see the ocean anytime, anywhere.

As our financial situation hit, he said we are going to postpone the plan but it would happen. So we waited. Two or three years went by, we sold the house. I did not even get to see it for the second time.

“Never did build that Glass Castle.”

“No. But we had fun planning it.”

“Those were some damn fine plans.”

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“Who do you think you are?” he asked. “She’s your mother.”

“Then why doesn’t she act like one?” I looked at Dad for what felt like a very long moment. Then I blurted out, “And why don’t you act like a dad?”

My parents are way more responsible than hers. However, I yelled the same words in my head for dozen times. Sometimes I wonder how my brother feels. He probably wonders where the hell did his dad go. And why it is he, that had to walk out of the room by himself at the age of two, with the background of his parents yelling at each other and fighting.

I can actually barely remember that summer if I don’t force myself to remember it. THAT summer in Vancouver seemed hotter than any summer that was in my memory. All those glass windows in a small apartment, keeping all the heat that made it almost into a steam room. All the silences that almost suffocated me.

Everyone had their own ways of escaping that summer. For dad it was casinos. Mom worked like crazy and I flew back to the east coast a month earlier than I was supposed to be.

The following fall, winter and spring were tough too. We didn’t stand beside each other. It would have made things worse. We just did not fall apart.

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The author also wrote extensively about her siblings. One sentence really touched me: “we figured that, as when we were kids, we both stood a better chance if we took on the world together.” It made me wonder, what would be like if I had actual siblings. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that my brother and I are doomed to be standing on the opposite side.

In the book, she wrote that her husband told her that “scar meant that you were stronger than whatever it was that had tried to hurt you.” I wonder if I ever did get a scar from all these messes.

If there is, I probably had buried it in my books, in my lifts, in my cups of coffee. I probably had spread them in the morning light, in the sleepless night and in the stars that have fallen from my eyes.

It is still a sensitive topic that everyone avoids and I wonder if anything would ever be solved, but I’ve recovered most of my strength and spirits by now. Yechan once asked me if I ever felt lonely. I said, all the time but it does not bother me anymore. I guess reading is one of my ways to feel less lonely.

After all, I really did appreciate the rose garden and the cherry trees he once gave me. Not everyone had owned a rose garden before.

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-- London, Ontario