Went to a writers' workshop yesterday.  Anne Chisled Barnhill gave a wonderful presentation about the strength of  the memoir as a tool for personal and social transformation.

She led the group into a writing exercise without knowing that one member of her audience (me) had for several years refused to let her muse be tested by such a technique. 

Yesterday I surrendered and took up the challenge to imagine myself at 8 or 9 entering a favorite room in my house.

"After dinner I loved to escape to a small sitting room off my parent's bedroom.  There was a large overstuffed chair in there with a floor lamp alongside.  I was slender and shorter then and my whole body fit snugly into the seat of that chair.

Mom and my brother and sisters would head upstairs to the t.v. room and I would be left in peace and welcome silence to open my book and enter into the world of the story I was reading.

There was nothing wrong with the world I was living in.  The house was large and homey.  My reading room had a battered wooden dresser that held extra linens.  A gray blue rug covered the floor.  A trunk with a rounded top sat nearby and sometimes when I needed a rest from reading I would study the scroll work on it and admire the intricate carvings some careful woodworker had chiseled long ago."