Thank You

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about college. It used to be I had years until college. Now it’s I have months. Soon it’ll be weeks and then days. I’m not the type of person who is excited about leaving. I’d rather stay at home. Looking forward into the future makes me look back on the past. I’ve had such a good childhood. Why would I ever want to leave it?

My mom. She does everything for me. She makes my lunch, does my laundry, vacuums my room. She has done so much for me that I’ve never had to wash a pile of laundry or fold my clothes. I’ve never had to worry about making my lunch. There is always a meal at the end of the day and someone to talk to after school.

My dad. He supports me in whatever I do. He pushes me without forcing me to do things. He’s there at my ski races, watching me race on the skies he tuned for two hours the night before. He drove me to eight colleges this summer and it is because of me he put 17,000 miles on his car in 4 months. And, yet, he doesn’t care because the only thing that matters to him is that I’m happy in life.

My parents. Together they have raised me to be who I am. I am indebted to them forever. They’ve paid for my skies, my soccer camps, my flight to Italy, my clothes, my movie tickets. They’ve driven me to soccer games, ski races, friends’ houses, piano lessons, doctor’s appointments. They’ve done all of this for me and don’t expect anything in return.

So as my last birthday at home came and went, and as my last Thanksgiving before college comes and goes, I just want to say:

Mom and Dad, thank you. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me. Thank you for raising me the way you have and thank you for always being there for me. Thank you for all of those mornings you saw me off to school and thank you for all of those nights you tucked me into bed. Thank for all of those hugs and kisses you gave me and thank you for all those lectures and speeches you told me. Thank you for always believing in me and thank you for never giving up on me. Thank you for always loving me and I hope you know I love you too. I hope I make you proud because I couldn’t be prouder to call you my mom and dad.

Alcoholism

The children of alcoholics were often overlooked in the past. Attention was always placed on the alcoholic himself to get him into treatment for his substance abuse. However, today it is just as important to treat the child because he or she can break the “three generation” disease of alcoholism. The child must realize that he or she needs not to continue the cycle. An emphasis has now been placed on the idea that anyone can break the addictive cycle. The children of alcoholics are not destined to live their parents’ lives. So how then does Jeannette Walls break away from alcoholism? If no one treated her, how is she able to fight the statistic that children of alcoholics are three times more likely to continue the cycle and become alcoholics?

Firstly, Jeannette is able to channel the emotional effects of an alcoholic parent into positive motivation to break the cycle. The embarrassment and anger she sometimes feels toward her father drives her to leave Welch and all its troubles behind. These emotions bring her to New York City, to Barnard, to a successful career in journalism.

I climbed in next to the driver. On the way home—with Dad still singing away in the back, extending the word “low” so long he sounded like a mooing cow—the man asked me about school. I told him I was studying hard because I wanted to become either a veterinarian or a geologist specializing in the Miocene period, when the mountains out west were formed. I was telling him how geodes were created from bubbles in lava when he interrupted me. “For the daughter of the town drunk, you sure got big plans,” he said. (183)

Her father is known as the town drunk and, yet, this will not hinder her hopes and ambitions. Jeannette will not follow in her father’s footsteps. She harnesses the shame she feels from his substance abuse to prove everyone wrong. The daughter of an alcoholic, or the child of any alcoholic for that matter, needs to set high goals in order to break the continuous cycle. If the child has nothing to live for, then why should he or she stop the addiction? Jeannette’s emotions give her the determination to not live a life of addiction and they ultimately lead her to success.

While Jeannette does not have the parental support a child needs, she does have strong support from her siblings. Both Brian and Lori (more so than Maureen) help Jeannette to break the cycle. Because of alcoholism and other problems in the family, the children grow to be independent. This independence allows them to set examples for each other to follow.

Brian grabbed the bottle out of my hand. He emptied it into the kitchen sink, then led me out to the shed and opened up a wooden trunk in the back marked TOY BOX. It was filled with empty liquor bottles. Whenever Dad passed out, Brian said, he took the bottle Dad had been drinking, emptied it, and hid it in the trunk. He’d wait until he had ten or twelve, then tote them to a garbage can a few blocks away, because if Dad saw empty bottles, he would get furious. (113)

By emptying his father’s liquor bottles, Brian sets an example for Jeannette; alcoholism is not a path to take. Such sibling support contributes to their success in breaking the cycle. Without Brian or Lori, Jeannette would surely see the destructive nature of alcoholism, but would not have the guidance to tell her the life of an alcoholic is not a life to live.

While The Glass Castle is a memoir of hardships, it is also one of success. Jeannette is able to break away from poverty, abuse, and alcoholism. She defies statistics and is able to create a life for herself.

Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle. New York: Scribner, 2005.

Jeannette Walls

If Jeannette had been born to a different family, would she be where she is today? Would she be as successful? Granted there probably would be no Glass Castle, but would she still have made it to New York, lived on Park Ave, and wrote about celebrities?

I'm not so sure. I think her dysfunctional family drove her to success.

Oh and by the way, I'm quite happy that the star story is true and I found her mother to be a much better artist than I thought she would be.

Linda and the Lives of the Dead

The Things They Carried is a book for everyone. It is not just a war novel or a romance. It is also a mystery, a comedy, a tragedy. It can be anything. The power of the book lies in its ability to affect each and every reader differently. The stories of the soldiers are not just the stories about the men who fought in Vietnam. They are our stories. Every burden they carry is a burden that we carry. In their backpacks, can be found our own guilt, our own grief, our own hope, or even our own joy. O’Brien says of his novel,

The title is meant to refer to all of us…not just the soldiers. [It’s about] the spiritual, the emotional, and the psychological baggage we all carry…You sort of accumulate more and more of these spiritual burdens the longer you live and they help to define who we are, what our yearnings are, what makes us happy and what doesn’t. [The title’s] meant to go beyond the war to the human race in general.

So what about Linda? How does the story of this mysterious girl fall into place? Who is she and what does she represent? Surely, she is not you or I. We are still living but, perhaps, she fits nicely into our lives and experiences.

Not all of us may have yet experienced the death of someone we know, but we will. Linda represents the lives of all the dead (as the title of the chapter she is found in is strategically called). She is your best friend’s father who died from cancer. She is your grandfather who died from a heart attack. She is the neighbor who was in a fatal car crash. Maybe she is me in ten, thirty, or even seventy years.

The dead have not actually left us. They are gone physically, but not spiritually or emotionally. They live on in our memories as Linda lives on in the memories of O’Brien. He can revive her; bring her back to the world through his writings. So why does he write this whole story about Linda, the movies, and the knit cap she always wore? O’Brien wants to connect us to her. In the process, he reconnects us to our dead, too. Through the description and story of Linda, we remember our own family members, friends, and neighbors that have died. We reestablish that bond we had with them. We relive the emotions or events we experienced with them and with their deaths.

Most importantly, however, we are reassured that it is okay that we were not ready for them to die. O’Brien writes, “At some point I had come to understand that Linda was sick, maybe even dying, but I loved her and just couldn’t accept it” (236). We cannot imagine someone who is close to us not ever being in our lives. We never truly picture them gone until it actually happens. It is an experience everyone goes through and O’Brien hopes to unite us together through the story of Linda.

The most powerful passage in the chapter about Linda is the metaphor for death as a book. Does it work in The Things They Carried? Perhaps, it does or maybe it does not. It is all perspective, but the most important thing is that it works in our own lives.

“Well, right now,” she said, “I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like…I don’t know, I guess it’s like being inside a book that nobody’s reading.”
“A book?” I said.
“An old one. It’s up on a library shelf, so you’re safe and everything, but the book hasn’t been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody’ll pick it up and start reading.” (245)

It is a comforting thought for most, not so comforting for others. However, the main focus of the passage is that the dead have not left. They are still present. We are just not always aware of them. Maybe, they are not necessarily waiting for us to remember them. Perhaps, they have their own lives to live in another time and place. But bring them back. Relive their voice, their laughter, their actions. They do not mind if we do so.


O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.