I just finished up a memoir class I ran in town for adults and I should have been writing about it all along. First, you need to know the space: The Factory, a huge art deco building in Collingswood that’s in the process of being re-fabbed into a “maker’s space.” The huge central space is filled with big-ass tools,  things no one would buy on their own, like a radial arm saw, whatever that is.

The mystery of how the act itself opens up things in a person’s brain is simply something I will never get over.  The group  would be in awe of the memories that came up—moments they didn’t know they remembered.  Mothers and sisters and grandmothers and the little kid down the street who took their bikes all floated into the room. Colors and smells and the feeling of being hungover, of waking up unsure of the bedroom they found themselves in, of dogs they knew and dances  they stayed outside in the parking lot for, all took shape.

Sometimes the smells of sawdust and the sound of …what? Things grinding, classic rock booming…were a distraction and sometimes they were a welcome kind of wall of energy to work against. We’d sit in our loft and talk about memory and metaphor, trash cans we remembered and cancer, beers and purple jeans, sometimes yelling about guilt wearing our mother’s face, over the sound of the machines below? Or maybe because it felt good to raise our voices.