四川大学学费查询-四川大学学费查询
The glass castle
1 I never
believed in Santa Claus.
2 None of
us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They
couldn't afford
expensive presents, and
they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as
other
kids who, on Christmas morning,
found all sorts of
fancy
toys under the tree that
were
supposedly
left by Santa Claus. So they told us all about how other kids
were deceived by their parents, how the
toys the grown-ups claimed were made by
little
elves
wearing bell caps in their
workshop
at the North Pole actually had
labels on them saying
MADE IN JAPAN.
3
fault
that they've been
brainwashed
into believing silly myths.
4 We
celebrated Christmas, but usually about a week
after December 25, when
you could find
perfectly good
bows
and wrapping paper that people had thrown away
and
Christmas
trees
discarded
on
the
roadside
that
still
had
most
of
their
needles
and even some silver
tinsel
hanging on them. Mom and Dad would give us a bag of
marbles
or
a
doll
or
a
slingshot
that
had
been
marked
way
down
in
an
after-Christmas
sale.
5 Dad lost his job
at the
gypsum
mine after getting in an argument with the
foreman
, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas
Eve,
Dad
took
each
of
us
kids
out
into
the
desert
night
one
by one.
I
had
a
blanket
wrapped around me, and when it was my
turn, I offered to share it with Dad, but
he said no thanks. The cold never
bothered him. I was five that year and I sat
next to Dad and we looked up at the
sky. Dad loved to talk about the stars. He
explained to us how they
rotated
through the night sky as the earth turned. He
taught us to identify
the
constellations
and how to
navigate
by the North Star.
Those shining stars, he liked to point
out, were one of the special
treats
for
people like us who lived out in the
wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived
in fancy
apartments
, but their air was so
polluted
they couldn't even see the
stars. We'd have
to be out of our minds to want to trade places
with any of them.
6
it
for keeps. He said it was my Christmas present.
I said.
one owns the stars.
Dad said.
them.
You
just have to claim it before anyone else does,
like that
dago
fellow
Columbus
claimed America
for
Queen Isabella
. Claiming a star as your own has every bit
as much logic
to it.
7 I thought about it and
realized Dad was right. He was always figuring out
things like that.
8 I
could
have
any
star
I
wanted,
Dad
said,
except
Betelgeuse
and
Rigel
,
because
Lori
and
Brian
had already laid claim to them.
9 I
looked up to the stars and tried to figure out
which was the best one.
You could see
hundreds, maybe thousands or even millions,
twinkling
in the clear
desert sky. The longer you looked and
the more your eyes adjusted to the dark,
the more stars you'd see,
layer
after layer of them gradually becoming
visible
.
There
was one in particular, in the west above the
mountains but low in the sky,
that
shone more brightly than all the rest.
10
11 Dad
grinned
.
Venus
was only a planet, he went on,
and pretty
dinky
compared to real stars. She looked bigger and brighter because
she
was much
closer than the
stars. Poor old
Venus didn't even make her own
light,
Dad said.
She shone only from reflected light. He explained
to me that planets
glowed because
reflected light was
constant
, and stars twinkled because their
light
pulsed.