The Safest Place
I used to use this exercise with my students sometimes to get them writing. This was my example:
The Safest Place
When I was growing up, the place I used to feel the safest was in this little camper trailer in the back yard of our house on Neal Street in Socorro. Our house sat about a block from the campus of the
That little camper was so cozy in the winter. It had that small kitchenette that all those campers have and smelled of cooking and closeness. I would take a book one time I remember it was LORD OF THE RINGSand snuggle up on the mattress in that tiny little camper and read in the dim light that came through its windows. Maybe that’s why I need glasses today. I feel comfortable and safe in dim light. Why would that be?
I also liked to take Sam with me. Sam was our Dachshund. He liked to eat and sleep, so he looked like a sausage that was over-stuffed. Anyway, Sam and I would snuggle down in the little camper in the back yard on Neal Street and read about hobbits, and elves and wizards. In that camper, I didn’t have to worry about school bullies, or homework, or fitting in. I could escape into a comfortable world of my own where I ruled. Tolkien took me there snuggled in that little camper in the back yard on Neal Street in Socorro, NM.
My safe place was my grandparents' house in Portales, 212 miles away from my brother's fists. I'd spent my summers there through 1975. When I was very small, I could go into my grandparents' room at night when I'd been frightened by a thunderstorm or banging gate and kiss my grandfather's nose. He'd wake up enough to let me into bed between him and Grandmother where I'd curl between them and go back to sleep listening to my grandmother hum hymns in her sleep and my grandfather's heavy snores. I was blessed.