Unfortunately her daughter Rose Mary had learned little from her mother, married an alcoholic drifter and rather than providing for her family was very self absorbed. It's a wonder that Jeannette Walls and her siblings survived in such a dysfunctional family who rarely had somewhere to call home or food to eat. When debts caught up with them the father declared they would be doing "the skeddadle" and packed up and took his family off into the night.
Jeannette looks back at the happy times she spent with her grandmother, who cut and combed her matted hair, made cream of wheat for breakfast and showered love on her grandchild.
The Glass Castle was a dream of Rex Walls, her father, to build a home with many windows and solar power, but most of the time the family just drifted from one ramshackle house to another. The children often slept in cardboard boxes. Even after Grandma Smith died (which her mother didn't bother to tell Jeanette about) and they inherited both a house and money, they destroyed the house, left doors and windows open at night and weren't overly concerned when a vagrant walked into Jeannette's room and tried to abuse her. Her father had taken his son to sit in a hotel room while he visited with a prostitute and took Jeannette to a bar and encouraged her to go upstairs with a man he had just fleeced at pool. Fortunately she escaped without any harm and without any help from her father.
Most of what little money they had went to alcohol for her father, art supplies for her mother and while the children were digging through trash cans at school for food, the mother was indulging herself in Hershey chocolate. Even when the children found a diamond ring which they thought would pay for food, the mother kept the ring as she said it would improve her self esteem.
The children mostly relied on their own resources to survive and even if they had money (Rose Mary got a monthly check from oil royalties resulting from land her mother had owned) Rex managed to take it for either some new scheme or a trip to the local bar. His work efforts rarely lasted for more than a few months. Their mother had no housekeeping skills and would rather spend money on a vase or some other decoration rather than cleaning. No one seemed to think repairs were necessary and Jeannette's brother slept with a tarp across his bed on rainy nights.
The Glass Castle was a difficult read, but Jeannette seems to acquired more of her grandmother's spirit and resourcefulness than her mother's selfish and unmotivated attitude.
