Books and Cooks: The Glass Castle

WE'RE READING:

I'M ORDERING: STUFFED CHICKEN TOLLA

It's the last Books and Cooks for the year, so we met at Tolla's, a cute bistro in Winter Park. On the one hand, I object since Tolla's is just one more instance of creeping gentrification, but on the other hand, the weather is gorgeous, and we get to eat outside. This time, temporal pleasure wins out over sociological outrage. And the Stuffed Chicken Tolla--stuffed with spinach, prosciutto, and feta and served over linguine--was quite tasty, too.

Jeannette Walls deserves a medal for surviving her childhood. Like many parents, I suffer from all types of insecurities regarding my children. Have I spoiled them? Ruined them? Prevented them from growing strong, flexible, and creative? Fed them properly? Apparently, these questions rarely came to the minds of Rex and Rose Mary Walls, Jeannette's parents. One's an alcoholic, the other's a depressive enabler. It's amazing that with so much against them, Jeannette and her three siblings all survived with their senses of humor intact and became successful, functioning adults.

Reading The Glass Castle is like watching an extremely painful episode of one of those nightmare family shows, except instead of out of control kids, here you have out of control parents. I found it interesting that in our discussion, the only people who had compassion for the parents' plight were those who don't yet have children of their own. Those of us with kids wanted to rush home and hug our own little devils and thank God and all of our lucky stars for the roofs over our heads and the food on our plates.

If the four Walls kids can make it through poverty, starvation, molestation, homelessness, and coal mining, perhaps the fact that I forget to check my kids' homework won't weigh too heavily against me in the lifetime parent sweepstakes.