The Glass Castle

I just finished reading this book, The Glass Castle. It is the memoir of a girl who grew up with eccentric parents. The family was quite poor but the parents seldom worked hard to change their situation. The father was an alcoholic and the mother was happy to live on the street. The children learned to survive their hardship by protecting themselves and rummaging for food in the school garbage.

I told my parents yesterday that the book reminded me of my life. Not that we were poor or that my parents were eccentric, but we did some strange things. Like when we went in the mountain to search for gold. On the drive, we would look for pop cans. When we spotted one, my dad would pull over and Kim and I would jump out to go get the cans. Somehow my dad made it fun. Or how about how my dad would take all of his old negatives and burn them to get silver out of the ashes. I thought we would make it big one day. Instead we just made a lot of smoke.

My mom would come along on all the outings and read her books. To get her attention we would yell, "Fire!" and then we were able to ask her a question. There was the time she didn't trust a rope bridge that we were about to drive over and she made us get out and walk across it so we wouldn't crash down while my dad drove over it. I got slivers because we had to rush out of the van without time to put my shoes on.

But all in all I had a great childhood. We all must learn from the family God gives us. I learned to be a little odd.