I thought of telling him of binary numbers and the Glass Castle and Venus and all the things that made my dad special and completely different from his dad, but I knew Billy wouldn't understand.
-The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
That's why she didn't bother to explain it all to Billy or, later on in life, to a professor at her college or the elegant woman in the restaurant. Why she couldn't tell teacher's at school about not having enough to eat, potential friends- or even enemies- about what her life was, about what her home was, what her family was. Because they just wouldn't understand. The cracking, leaking, freezing ceilings, empty cabinets and drunken rages weren't something that she could sum up in a small talk, describe in a simple conversation. Neither were the midnight 'skedaddle's to neighboring states to escape police or tax collectors or gangsters. But, neither were the walks in the dessert, the stories her dad told them, the paintings her mother made, the incredible bond that those four kids shared. Neither were the christmas where she got to choose her very own star for a present or the faith that she had in her father, weak as it may have been growing.
I find myself in a stage of life where, like so many typical whiny teenagers, things don't really make sense. I often have a hard time sorting out, explaining aspects of my own life to myself much less to other people. My mind is a messy jumble of thoughts that, like my bedroom, I cannot seem to keep in order and I try hard to make sure that these thoughts remain as thoughts because should they slip out as spoken words, I don't think that anyone would really understand, including myself. That being said, if I held it all inside my mind, building and piling up, doing nothing, going nowhere- despite being young and all- I think I might explode. So I write. And although I'm not working on a book like Jeanette Walls, I can publish something to my blog that no one reads or pencil it in in a notebook or type something up in Google docs and let it sit there and do nothing with it but somehow understand now that it's all written out. Because although I may fumble with thoughts and feelings and spoken words, once I'm sitting at a keyboard or waiting with a pen in hand, I have no trouble at all in whatever it may be that I'm trying to decipher.
This book is the exact epitome of why I write- it is a way for Jeanette Walls to explain what can't be said simply- the kind of thing that only fits when written. It's a way of describing her childhood so that others, and maybe she as well, can understand. Maybe I don't read enough, and this is really just the point of all memoirs. Even if it is, there's something beyond special about this one. Even writing, I can't seem to even begin illustrate just what this book is, what makes it so strikingly beautiful- if it's the voice or the people or the language- but I think that it's some of everything that makes the best stories. Not being as good of a writer as she is, I'm unsure of how to justify why it's amazing, but really and truly it is. So, just go read The Glass Castle- you won't regret it.
