p. 7 “Don’t rummage around in your past for ‘important’ events — events you think are important enough to justify asking the rest of us to read about them. Write about small, self-contained events that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them it’s because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you’ll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
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“Little girl, would you like to come over to play?”

Those matronly words were the way I tried to start the first friendship of my life. It’s hard to believe that my parents let me cross the street by myself at age four. I must be imagining that. My mother must have watched anxiously from the other side of the road.

I don’t remember what Rebecca or Starr said. Probably she had to go ask her mom. Maybe we didn’t play that day, but we did play eventually.

Maybe my mom did send me off by myself. After all, she did lock my brother and me outdoors when she wanted to take a nap.