I started reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls yesterday. I’ve only read the first twenty five pages, and I’m not sure if I like it. My gut reaction is I don’t like it and the story of her neglectful parents makes me mad, and so far it seems like she’s putting her dad on a pedestal. Her love for her parents is so strong even though they are terrible parents and maybe that’s how most kids are, they have unconditional love for their parents. Maybe I don’t like the story because she has so much to say about her dad and it’s hitting a nerve inside me. I have very little to say about my dad. I don’t know if I ever had blind love for my dad like Jeannette has for hers. I can’t recite many stories about him. Only that he was a sailor and taught me how to sail. He taught me to scrape barnacles off the hull and to row a dingy at night in the fog. My most intimate memory was I pooped while taking a bath with my dad, we both started laughing and thought it was super funny, I must have been around three or four years old. In Jeannette’s story her Dad Rex Walls tells the kids bedtime stories, mostly about himself she says. My dad doesn’t talk. To get him to say anything takes a lot of coaxing, and a lot of what comes out is strange and sometimes revengeful towards my mom. I don’t remember ever feeling like I loved my dad so much, I only remember being really mad at him or having no feelings about him at all. I’m not expecting much next week while he’s here. I have very few emotions at all about his visit. I texted Danny last night to see how the honoring was going at the nugget and Danny said “It’s so fucking weird!!!!!!!!”
Tag: memory
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I put Fiona in the carrier on the walk down to the park this morning. I held Jack’s hand as he traversed the curbs, picked up handfuls of wood chips, and finally when my most patient self ran out of patience I picked Jack up, feeling equal weight on my back and front sides. I imagined myself living in a time or place where this would be the common way women carried children. I’m racking my mind trying to remember my dad in my life as a child. I can only come up with moments, dark moments, blurry moments. Once sitting at a round damp wood table on a chair that seemed like it would be in a bar. My dad was talking to a private detective who wore a check shirt and had squinty eyes. He told my dad about the roaches that were found in my dad’s stolen truck. I said, “Gross, why were there roaches in his truck?” I imagined inside his camper shell being covered with roaches and old food. The detective said “No, not those kind of roaches.” I was then given an explanation of the type of roaches they were, not really understanding, I must have been about eight. I remember the Louis Lamour paperbacks I would find in the mailbox with a note attached, “Jen” on the nights my dad was supposed to pick us up. When he didn’t show for over an hour my mom broke down and took me and Danny out for spaghetti and ice cream. Did he expect us to just wait around for him? Danny is on his way up to Reno right now to see my Dad get honored in the weight loss competition tonight. Then Sunday he is driving Betty and my dad down here. They will stay in a motel for the first five nights, then with us Friday to Monday. It’s gonna be a freak show. They stay up at night fiddling around and sleep during most of the morning. He’s my dad. With his grunting and consistent lateness. I wonder what Jack and Fiona will think of them? On our way back from the park I tried to let both babies walk back up the hill, but Jack sat down and cried because he didn’t want to leave the park. I put him in the carrier and let Fiona walk. She made it the whole way up the hill. She picked up a tiny arbutus flower, touched the different grasses, and pet our neighbors dog Kirby. It must have seemed like a great adventure to them. When we got back to the house they relaxed and looked at books, had a snack of avocado, pear and cheese, and are now taking a nap. I wonder if they are dreaming.
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“The poison oak leaves are already turning orange” I say. My feet landing on the trail feeling the weight of Jack and the osprey carrier. Today was Jacks turn to go on a hike with Billy and me. I let Jack walk down the hill, past the lavender and what I call cattails because of their soft ends, but I think are a type of flax. He walked along the edge of the curb until he got to branches growing out into the street. He stops to examine them, Billy is sniffing all along, and I’m engaging my most patient self. I keep Jack in the carrier on the trail still, the smell of dog poop permeates my nostrils and the thought of Jack tasting it runs through my mind. My legs work hard to get us up that first hill, step over the fallen tree, and climb up the old wooden steps. I’m bringing Jack into my special place, the walk I’ve taken almost religiously for the past eight years. I can still feel my quads wet inside my rain suit, water dripping in my eyes, black dog hair sticking to my hands and the smell of dog piss, from the first week after my mom died all those years ago. Billy, Zappa, and I would be up on the trail early in the morning. It was a wet and stormy winter. I would wear my mom’s raincoat to be close to her. It smelt like her house, musty, eventually needing to be thrown away. The moss on the trees was bright green and the creek ran fast. The tears on my cheeks ran just as fast, my eyes puffy and swollen, my world changed forever. Never imagining then I would be here today hiking with my little boy. I tell Jack all about the bark on the trees, how the moss is brown but will turn green, and that someday, when he’s bigger I’ll teach him how to hike on this trail without getting poison oak. My memories of today merging with my memories of the past.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 