Book Report: The Glass Castle

I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls for book club. It's a memoir about her growing up in poverty with her brother & 2 sisters and the horrible situations her parents put them through. The book starts off with Jeanette's memory of being burned while cooking hotdogs when she was 3, and her parents kidnapping her from the hospital where she was recuperating - to picking food from the trash during school while her mom bought candy bars and hid it from the kids.

The book, while beautifully written, was aweful for me to read. The hardest part is that it was all true - the 4 kids starved while the father and mother put them in dangerous situations, couldn't feed them, and yet were so disturbed that the spent the money on drinking and tchotchkes for the shack they lived in. I can't believe that child services never took the kids away. It is so hard to believe that the kids covered up for their parents so often, and that the parents chose to live like they did. Someone should have stepped in and saved those kids from a mother who didn't want to be burndened by family and a father who was too sick with alchohalism to help them. There must be thousands of families out there like this now in the US- and I wish I knew how to help even one of them.

It also reminds me of something I heard last year, but can't remember where from:

There was a man on his way home, when he felt the need to buy a gallon of milk. Once he bought the milk, he was steered over to a house in the city, rung the doorbell and handed them the milk; he had never been to the house before, nor knew of the family, and was not proned to do things like this - he just was listening to the feelings he had. They family was crying over happiness and disbelief because the baby was starving and they didnt have any money. One of the parents had just been praying for milk a few moments earlier.

I had told my aunt this story and she said in reply "if you knew what was going on behind the walls of the homes in our own city- you'd break down the doors and risk everything to save those kids." It's so true- yet we dont have the transparency or understanding of our own city and processes to help them. If I knew how to help those families more permanantly, I would. I would open my house to teenagers or a family if I knew it was safe - I would give people money if I knew they'd use it for food and not drinking / drugs. I know my hubby feels the same way- he encourages that from me.

How do we get there though? How do we give back during this recession, where people not used to having to simply survive are starting to fall below the poverty line? How do we do it safely, and still help these people? I guess I'll just have to pray to keep my eyes open a little bit more, and be thankful for my own protected upbringing.

Related: Just saw this on CNN.