Books

A few weeks ago my mom gave me some book store gift cards; cards my dad had been given that he didn't spend. So I took myself off to the book store for some free books, courtesy of Dad.

I love book shopping. It's one of the few things I truly enjoy shopping for. It was something Dad and I did together every year at Christmas - except last year, he was too sick to go shopping. I've been to the book store without him, of course, but it was sort of our thing. He would get a coffee and I'd get hot chocolate and we would browse together, talking about our favourite authors or books we really hated. He would always buy me a book - a secret pre-Christmas gift. Not that we had anyone to keep it secret from.

I had a little cry and I missed him terribly but I got some cool books. And in the category building weird memories that don't entirely make sense, whenever I make soap I'll think of Bill and the book he bought me.

Book review: The Glass Castle

Book: The Glass Castle

Author: Jeannette Walls

Genre: Memoir

Dates read: April 3-7, 2018

It’s not often that a book will have me crying and laughing, from one sentence to the next. Jeannette Walls takes us through a life sketch that is beautifully horrifying, written in the way that people who live with dysfunction normalize those experiences.

From catching herself on fire during unsupervised cooking at age three to facing hunger, poverty, and abuse as a young woman, we are taken through her lifetime of being dragged from one place to the next by parents who refuse to put down roots.

The Walls family is nomadic at best. They suffer a father who drinks what he earns and has grandiose plans that are never realized; their mother sees herself as an artist and writer but remains direction-less and seemingly out of touch with reality. It is easy to despise the parents; while reading this I was at times enraged by their irresponsibility, their lack of planning, their disregard for social norms and basic necessities.

Rex Walls is an alcoholic; he gambles and lies, and he doesn’t take responsibility for his actions. Mary seems sweet at times, but expects her children to be grateful for what they have, when in reality they have nothing. Often living in ramshackle conditions in homes that are falling down around them, Mary refuses to work for much of the time, claiming that she can be a successful artist if she just had the time to devote to her paintings. They rarely have money for food or shoes without holes, but Dad always has cigarettes and booze and Mom always has art supplies.

As we read more about the family and Jeanette’s experiences, I am struck by her perseverance. And despite the deep flaws in her parents, I am reminded again and again that people aren’t just one thing.

Broken things

My dad loved gadgets. Computers, cell phones, game systems, VCRs... anything with a hard drive and a power supply. He liked them when they were new; he liked them when they died and he could take their brains out and bang around on their insides. Whenever a gadget quit working, it would go into dad's pile of dead electronics. He claimed he could get anything working if he could figure out what made it tick- all you had to do was tighten up some screws or replace a something-or-other on the inside, and it would be all fixed. He never fixed anything, but he enjoyed tinkering with old electronics.

He also liked it whenever anyone got something new. I have an affinity for accessories, and would routinely change out my phone case. Every time I had a new case, he'd ask me if I got a new phone. He never seemed to be able to tell that it was just a new case. Every couple of months for 4 years this would come up. I would roll my eyes and laugh and explain it was the same old phone in a new case.

But if I did get something new, I would always want to show him because he would oooh and aaah in just the right way. Over the last few months I've had a few new things; I got a new cell phone and I felt sort of sad that I finally had a new phone and couldn't tell him. I think he would have had very strong opinions about facial recognition, and that would have been fun to debate with him.

I also got a new laptop recently and while he would have liked to play with it, I think he really would have just wanted my old, broken one. The touch screen and mouse were both broken and I think he would have enjoyed pretending that he could take it apart and fix it, and I would have enjoyed pretending I believed him.

It's sort of funny how when someone dies and suddenly everything in your life reminds you of them, of their mannerisms and attitudes and their sense of humour. My dad's way of being just a little silly might be one of the things I miss the most: how he'd set his jaw and insist that he could fix something that was broken when we all knew that he couldn't really.

It's been 105 days since my dad died, and the conversations I need to have with him are piling up. We are going to have so much to talk about when we're together again.