Being a parent is not always an easy job for everyone. Some parents have to balance their jobs, kids, house payments, and other important things they need to tend to. Sometimes both parents work, and other times, there is only one parent in the children’s lives taking care of them. This sounds challenging, but it would be even worse if the parent was an alcoholic while having the responsibility of taking care of kids, paying bills and so on while living in very bad conditions. Rex Walls was a real life character in a memoir called The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. The book is about the author and her family who battled extreme poverty in the 1960s and 70s. Rex was the father of the family who was a raging alcoholic and who could not fight off his inner demons, so he often turned to his liquor as his only out. Rex was not always there for his children like a father should be, and he let them down numerous times, but he also showed how much he loved and cared for them despite his issues.
Rex Walls broke a serious promise to his child and was a very irresponsible father. One promise he could not keep was when ten-year-old Jeanette asked him to stop drinking for her birthday present. He told Jeanette he would get her anything she wanted for her birthday. When she asked him this question, he got a hurt look in his eyes and said, “You must be awfully ashamed of your old man” (116). For a short period of time, he stopped drinking just for her but then he started up again. After Jeanette felt let down by her father, she said, “I didn’t feel like celebrating. After all he had put himself through, I couldn’t believe Dad had gone back to the booze” (123). Rex let Jeanette down because even though the other children didn’t believe he would stop, she still had hope
he would. Rex may love his kids, but it is apparent that alcohol is more important to him and something that he cannot live without.
Rex’s irresponsibility showed when he was driving his family to Las Vegas and Jeannette fell out of the car when he took a sharp turn. Jeanette was waiting for her father to come back for her right away but it took him much too long to come back. When he finally did, his excuse for not noticing her fall out was, ‘”Your brother was trying to tell us that you’d fallen out, but he was blubbering so dammed hard we couldn’t understand a word he was saying'” (Walls 31). Rex was also irresponsible in never paying his bills and always running away from his problems instead of facing them. To bluntly put it, Rex was a coward. Fathers are supposed to be good role models for their children and Rex Walls was teaching his children how to lie, cheat, and steal.
Rex was not there for his children in their times of need. When the family was staying with Rex’s mother, Erma, for a while in Welch, Erma one day at dinnertime told Brian that she noticed his breeches needed mending. Jeanette hears him protesting a little while later in the other room and finds Erma touching Brian inappropriately. Jeanette yells at Erma, and Lori and Erma get in a physical fight when Lori tries to calm the situation down. When Rex comes home and hears of this, he goes down to the basement where Erma sent the children after the incident, and gets angry at them for protecting themselves. “Brian’s a man, he can take it,” he said. ‘”I don’t want to hear another word of this. Do you hear me?” (148). Rex doesn’t care that Lori and Brain got physically and emotionally injured by his mother and blames them for what happened.
Rex left Jeanette in a very vulnerable and dangerous situation when she accompanied him at a bar. A friend of Rex’s named Robbie asks her to come upstairs with him and Rex tells her to go, so she follows Robbie upstairs where he proceeds to try and take advantage of her with some other men. She makes an excuse that she hears her father calling her and goes back downstairs where Rex hands her some money to pay her back for some money he borrowed from her. She tells him that Robbie attacked her upstairs and all he says is, “I’m sure he just pawed you some, I knew you could handle yourself” (213). Rex not only set his own daughter up to have sex for money but he wasn’t aware of her possible discomforts when he sent her upstairs. Rex believes that his children should fend for themselves and deal with their own issues without offering a comforting hand for them.
Rex displays his love and affection for his children by creating unforgettable experiences for them and giving them very unique gifts. For Christmas one year, Rex took his children out into the desert night one by one where they lived and told them that they could have any star in the sky for their Christmas present. Rex knew they had no money for presents so he made his kids feel special by “giving” them their own star. When Jeanette questions him and tells him that no one can own a star, he tells her that she is right and one must claim a star to have it. Rex says, “Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten, you’ll still have your stars” (41). Rex made his children feel special knowing that they had presents that would last forever, whereas other kids could only enjoy their material gifts for so long. It was these simple joys and their father’s creative imagination that made the kids admire and love him for.
Rex showed that he was a caring father by caring about what was important to his kids and being present for big stages in their lives as well as teaching them how to survive. At one point in the novel, the Walls family had to leave the place they were currently living at called Battle Mountain and Rex told the kids they could only bring one possession with them. Jeanette had a rock collection that was very meaningful to her that she wanted to bring but Rex told her she could only bring one rock. She did as she was told and only brought one to their new destination but later on, Rex had second thoughts about what he said to her. He knew how much the rock collection meant to her, and in his own way, he apologized to her for making her leave it behind. “You know, Mountain Goat, I still feel bad about making you leave your rock collection back in Battle Mountain,” he said. But we had to travel light” (99). Rex realized that made a mistake, and even though there was no fixing it then, he still acknowledged that the rock collection was important to his daughter.
Rex taught his kids how to be tough and survive in the world. He taught them how to fight and defend themselves and to not show fear. There were situations where they needed to know how to fight and be brave such as when kids would pick fights with them and when they were forced to live without food for days. When the family was living in Battle Mountain, Rex took his kids to the Hot Pot, a natural sulfur spring in the desert north of the town, where he taught Jeanette how to swim or rather, forced her to learn. He threw her into the water which made her swim to survive. Some people would think this is harsh for a father to do but this was the way Jeanette got stronger and overcame her fear of deep water. He helped her get over her fear and taught her something that was crucial for her to know. Rex shows how much he cares about Jeanette when he sees her off when she goes to live in New York. Rex was disappearing often around this time and sometimes didn’t come home for days, but he made sure he was there to see his daughter leave on her life changing journey to the big city. His last words to her before she left were, “If things don’t work out, you can always come home, I’ll be here for you. You know that, don’t you?” (Walls 240). Rex expresses his sadness and care about his daughter leaving by being present for her next big step in life.
Rex Walls turned out to be both a good father and bad father based on his strengths and weaknesses. In some areas of raising his children, Rex had strength such as making sure they could survive on their own and being self-sufficient. In other areas, Rex showed he was weak when he would not protect his children from harm and when he let his alcoholism affect them. One of my favorite inspirational things Rex says is, “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim” (66). He believed that people should work hard in order to achieve something and this is a good trait that he instilled in his children. Rex was a man who had a rough life and a drinking problem. He could not always be the best father for his children and understandably, this is something that can never be repaired. However, Rex did the best he could for his children in the times when he would snap back to reality and realize he had children to care for. Nobody is perfect and Rex certainly did not come close to perfect, but he gave his love to his kids as much as he could and having a father who loved them and was present for most of their lives, was not something every child could say.
