And so castles made of sand,

Fall into the sea, eventually...

When Dad wasn’t telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase…He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever he went, and sometimes he’d pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms. All we had to do was find gold, Dad said and we were on the verge of that. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on the Glass Castle. 

-- Jeannette Walls