Showing posts with label life burdens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life burdens. Show all posts

Monday, May 16, 2011

making the call

Fighting back the tears
I reach for 
Help...
"Please help"

I can not do this anymore,
not alone.
I can no longer fight
the war that will not be won.

and I am bleeding...

the shaking begins 
 the story pours out
along with a single,stray, suppressed
tear

i can not do this anymore
i hurt, i ache 
with every beat of your heart
my fears explode

Your ocean drowns me

 nascent blisters pop
unrecognizable excuses of life 
into my face
I shudder - not able to turn away

please help - I can no longer do this
the life raft I offer
is faded, peeling from 
disuse

I can not do this anymore
...


Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Glass Castle: A Memoir By Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle: A Memoir;  by Jeannette Walls (© 2005 Jeannette Walls, Publisher - Scribner, 288 pages)

I went to a friend's house for dinner not long ago. We hadn't seen each other in almost two years, so there was a lot of catching up to do. We discussed our children, our jobs, but more importantly, what we were doing with our lives to bring us a spot of joy. Both of us discovered that we had joined book clubs since we had seen each other last. Before I left, she handed me a book that she had read a few months back. She had enjoyed it and thought I might too. I got a brief synopsis, then went home with smiles on my face from dinner with good friends  and the acquisition of a new book for my bedside table. The Glass Castle was that book. I think I read it in about 3 days.

The Glass Castle is a memoir from Jeannette Walls. The cover proclaims the book a New York Times Bestseller, and the back page remarks that it won a Christopher Award and a Books for a Better Life Award. While I can appreciate praise, I opened the book ready to make my own judgement of how good the book really was. I met Walls sliding down in the seat of a taxi, trying to remain unseen by her Mother, as she rifled through a dumpster. An interesting start. I read on.

From Walls' introduction in her elegant party attire and lavish apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, we are taken back  in time to her youth. Her first memory is from the age of three. She begins her tale casually describing an accident where she is badly burned while cooking hot dogs in her family's small trailer in Arizona. Her Mother manages to get a neighbour to drive them to hospital, where Jeannette spends the next six weeks recovering from the burns and subsequent skin grafts that were necessary to save her life. She is strangely calm and accepting of the trauma, almost relishing her stay in hospital where she gets regular meals, clean clothes and bedding, plus much attention from the doctors and nursing staff. While her family comes to visit her, her Father comes across as brash and un-trusting of the environment. After arguing with the doctors on yet another occasion, her father materializes one day to check Jeannette out "Rex Walls-style"; he clandestinely unhooks her from her sling, picks her up in his arms and runs pell-mell down the hallway and out the emergency doors to their idling car.

"You're safe now," he proclaims, but as I read on, the truth of that seems improbable.

Jeannette was one of four children of Rex Walls and Rose Mary. As the story continues we get to know the Walls family; Dad's drunken ranting, cussing and raving, Mom's obsession with painting and little else, and the four children that seem to be pretty much left to their own devices to fend for themselves. Money is always tight and often non-existent. Food is a luxury that is wolfed down for its scarcity. In the first dozen years of Walls' life travel is frequent, but usually in the form of a "skedaddle" where most everything is left behind, as they depart in the middle of the night.

The years are tough, but Walls weaves a story that does not ask for sympathy. While her father is a self-serving alcoholic, he loves his family and tries to install his values in the children. They often wear threadbare clothes and get teased for being skin-and-bones, but all of the kids boast high intelligent and polite manners. Cleanliness might not be held in regard, but knowledge is of the utmost importance. Walls demonstrates this when she recounts a Christmas where a lack of money translates to a bleak looking holiday. With a keen sense of ingenuity and pure love, Rex gives each of his children a star for Christmas. With the gift of the star, also comes all the knowledge about its attributes, that belies the intelligence that can be found within Walls' stormy Father. You cannot help but acquiesce the materialism that surrounds the holiday and indeed of the North American culture as a whole.

The abject poverty leads one to assume that the Walls children are all doomed to abysmal lives. The funny thing about it is, that the morals and strict adherence to a decent education, often found while wandering through the desert or tinkering with broken objects, does exactly the opposite. I remind myself that the story starts with Walls obviously being well off, and this is due in large part to her strength of character and perseverance. She paints a bleak history, but cannot truly lay anger on the table at almost any point. While her struggles are more than most could bear, she offers us glittering jewels of life in amongst the dreariness that threatens to wash away the whole family. There is much pain in the telling of the story, but when I turned the last page in the book, I also found much love that touched my heart. Again, I don't think that Walls is trying to hold up her life as an example of what not to do or what to do, but she manages to find life along the broken path. She makes you want to look at your own path and find your own inner beauty amongst the scar tissues that we all have. I finished the book, sad that it was over, but warmed by this woman who was honest and true to herself and her life, refusing to let any little thing get her down. She made me want to be a better person and then reminded me, that I am.

So yes, I think the book was worthy of being on the New York Times Bestseller list for over three years and would recommend it to anyone who isn't afraid to get dirty, throw rocks and have rocks thrown right back at you. The Glass Castle is a dream that we all reach for and Walls is generous in letting us see hers.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Monday wanes philosophic

Bed ways is right ways, but a comment to the world at large before sleep steals my soul.
   We all live in our own world. We have control over our world and no one else's. We may touch and influence those around us, but ultimately they are in control of their own destinies. Our children make their own minds up even as infants. We can offer and help shape, but no one can make up all the decisions. Even in acquiescing we make that decision. In that way we come at the world as individuals. No one has lived your life and you cannot live anyone else's. Your burdens are your own. If we reach out and ask for help and get nothing, that is all we can expect. If someone reaches out and offers a hand when we are fallen and dirty, this is a joy we can cherish. We might fall at something big or something little. Who is to say that my big is not really little or your little is truly huge. It is all relative. We can only view it through our own filter. Ultimately we can only live our own life, so what does it matter what the next person's burden is. We all have our burdens and they are own own to carry. Mine is mine and not anyone else's. It is as much as I can and need to carry. I do not need to worry that someone else's burden looks different than mine. We can help and offer to share. That is a beautiful thing, but it does not always happen. At times it should not happen either, as we only live one life and it is ours. It is yours alone. You walk side by side, not in each other's footsteps. If you are lucky enough to have someone to walk beside. Some days you may see no one, but you would be surprised that some days when it feels like you will never see a soul again an army of angels is there helping to carry the load. I can look at my darkest hours and see the angels. Some days they were subtle. Some days it was overwhelming. I share, but this is my experience. Mine alone that I cannot replicate or do over. I control me. Myself alone. That is enough. Enough for me. Enough for one night. Enough for anyone.

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