Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep - Friendsgiving

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Our story tonight is called Friendsgiving and it’s a story about a meal shared on mismatched dishes across an old table. It’s also about a gate connecting two yards, the way crabapple trees grow, and making new traditions when things change. So get cozy and ready to sleep. Buy the book Get beautiful NMH merch Get autographed copies Get our ad-free and bonus episodesPurchase Our Book: https://bit.ly/Nothing-Much-HappensSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Grownups, in which nothing much happens, you feel good, and then you fall asleep. I'm Catherine Nicolai. I read and write all the stories you hear on Nothing Much Happens. Audio engineering is by Bob Wittersheim. If you enjoy these bedtime stories, I think you would love my book, also called Nothing Much Happens. Readers have reached out to say that besides its beautiful illustrations

and besides the stories that you never hear on the podcast, its recipes and care rituals, it feels like a protective talisman when it sits on their bedside table. It makes them feel safe just knowing it's there. Buy it from your favorite bookseller or get an autographed copy wrapped up by my own two hands at my website, nothingmuchappens.com Now, let me say a little about how this podcast works.

Your mind needs a place to rest, and without one, it's likely to wander, then race, and ultimately keep you up. The story I'm about to tell you is like a soft nest to lay your mind into. As you listen to the sound of my voice and the details of the story, your mind will settle deeper and deeper into rest. I'll tell the story twice,

and I'll go a little slower the second time through. If you wake in the middle of the night, you could listen again, or just think your way back through any of the details that you can remember. This will settle your mind back into its nest and you will sleep. All of this is a kind of brain training and the more you do it, the more effective it will become. Have patience if you are new to it. Now, it's time to switch off the light and set down anything you've been looking

at. You have officially looked at a screen for the last time today. Get your body as comfortable as possible. Feel the softness of the sheets or the heaviness of your comforter. And let your eyes close. You are about to fall asleep, and you will sleep deeply all night. Take it out through your mouth. Again, in and out. Good. Our story tonight is called Friendsgiving, and it's a story about a meal shared on mismatched dishes across an old table. It's also about a gate connecting two yards, the way crab apple trees grow, and making new traditions when things change.

Friends giving. We'd come up with the idea over the fence in my backyard. Back at the beginning of the fall, when I was taking down the tomato cages in my garden, and my neighbor was raking the first of the fallen leaves in his yard. He'd called out to me to tell me that he'd made a soup with the last of my tomatoes and basil the night before. I'd brought them over in a bushel basket and left them on his doorstep, hoping he could make good use of them before they went bad.

He told me that he'd roasted them in his oven until they were blistered and just a bit charred, and then blended them with broth and sprinkled the top with plenty of freshly ground black pepper and ribbons of basil. I dropped my cages by the edge of the garden and plucked off my gloves as I strode over to the fence. I propped my elbows on its top rail to listen. Tell me more, I said, making him laugh.

We were old friends, having both grown up right here, each of us taking over our family homes when it was time. And one of our shared passions was food. We passed recipes back and forth, traded cookbooks, and ate from each other's gardens so much we eventually had a gate installed between our yards. I'd hear him unlatching it in the morning,

a coffee cup in one hand, as he picked a few cucumbers to go in a salad for lunch. I'd cross into his yard in the evenings and fill a colander with raspberries that grew all along one side of the yard to make into jam for my morning toast. As he told me more about his tomato soup and the croutons he'd made with a day-old loaf of bread. It made me think about the bread I used to make stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner.

The cafe downtown sold bags of bread ends, the cut-off bits that were too small or rounded to make a sandwich out of. And I would buy a bag or two and cut them up into cubes and let them dry on a baking sheet or toast them in the oven. I must have gone quiet in my Thanksgiving musings, and my friend noticed. He propped his arm on his rake handle and cocked his head to one side to ask what was on my mind. Thanksgiving is going to be different this year, I said. He nodded slowly.

Things change. Even the traditions we expect to go on forever can be interrupted. And I'd been mentally stumbling over the idea of the end of November for a while now, not sure what it would look like or how it would feel. He leaned his rake against the trunk of a crabapple tree that took up most of the back corner of the lot. Crabapples are excellent trees for climbing. They have long, low branches that run nearly level with the ground,

and we'd climbed this one a hundred times as kids. He shook out a lawn bag and said, Let's host together this year. We'll find a few friends without plans, and we'll have a little friendsgiving. What do you think? The sun came out as we'd been talking, and I shielded my eyes with one hand and smiled wide at him.

Perfect. Why didn't we think of it before? He started catching up big handfuls of leaves and dropping them into the bag. And as long as we're changing things up, let's try some new recipes. We can make a couple new traditions. I pulled my garden gloves back on and propped my hands on my hips. I've got a dozen recipes that I've been waiting to find a reason to make. I'll let you know what I come up with.

I'd gone back to wrangling the tomato cages, and when the garden was put to bed, I'd waved over the fence and gone in to make a list. We spent the next couple of weeks exchanging cookbooks and torn out pages from magazines over the fence, calling up a few friends who we thought might be in the market for a different sort of holiday, and dividing up the chores. We'd have the meal at his place. He had an ancient dining room table

with leaves that could double its length if needed. There would only be five or six of us, but we'd planned so many different dishes, we needed the serving space. On Thanksgiving morning, we needed the serving space. On Thanksgiving morning, we had one last council of chefs over the gate in the backyard, each of us a tall cup of coffee in our hands

and the steam matching our breath in the cold morning air. I'd wanted to serve the meal on my grandmother's china and had been washing and carefully stacking the plates into a deep box to bring over in time to set the table. He'd been watching videos about how to fold napkins in various fancy ways and still hadn't picked a style. I'd bought candles for the table

and he'd made a playlist for pre-dinner, dinner, and dessert. We laughed as we sipped our coffee, realizing that we might have overthought the details a bit. But we were having fun, and that was the point. We clinked cups and headed back into our respective kitchens to get on with it. Now, it was a point of contention between us, as to when Thanksgiving dinner should be served.

In my household, it had always been truly a dinner and came around 5 p.m., just as the sun was setting. In his family, everyone had been seated at the table no later than one in the afternoon. We'd split the difference and asked our friends to show up around three. That way we had plenty of time to cook, And everyone would have plenty of time to digest before bed. At 2.30, I was setting out the china. The silverware drawer had been full of mismatched forks, spoons, and knives. But that seemed just about right for the day.

So I carefully laid them out, lining up their stems like a butler in an English country house. The music was going, and the candles were lit. I had a focaccia in the oven that I'd made by hand, pressing divots into the soft dough with my fingertips, where they caught olive oil and grains of sea salt and strips of sage I'd grown myself.

I wanted our friends to smell it at the moment they opened the door, because there is no scent quite as welcoming as fresh-baked bread. Soon, the first knock came. A friend, a bottle of wine. Another friend, a homemade pie. Another knock, two more for dinner, and a casserole dish wrapped in a kitchen towel to hold in the heat. We'd all gotten a bit spiffed up when we toasted each other on having a very grown-up Thanksgiving. Along with the mismatched silverware, we'd leaned into the idea

that the meal didn't need to look like most other Thanksgivings. There was the focaccia, and to go with it, I'd made mushroom and wild rice soup, thickened with a roux and seasoned with lots of fresh thyme. He'd made sheet trays of something we were calling Thanksgiving nachos, for which he'd made homemade refried beans, from a recipe that had taken nearly 24 hours to complete. I'd made smashed rather than mashed potatoes, by parboiling a lot of smallish Yukon Golds, then laying them out in the roasting pan and smashing them down with the underside of a drinking glass,

splashing olive oil and seasoning all over and sliding them into the oven. We made Lebanese garlic sauce, whipped in the food processor to go with them. There was a plate of tiny fried cakes we'd made from diced peppers and hearts of palm and breadcrumbs and Old Bay seasoning. And there was a huge salad with dark green leaf lettuce and toasted pine nuts and marinated red onion and the simplest and best vinaigrette that was just a couple of ingredients shaken together in a mason jar.

After much testing, I'd finally and controversially converted completely from pumpkin pie to sweet potato pie, and two were cooling on a shelf in the pantry. Sitting at the table, passing plates and refilling glasses, I was so happy to be where I was. It was different. Those long-held traditions had seemed like pillars holding up the year. And if they changed, if they didn't happen just as they always had, it felt like perhaps the whole year would come crashing down. But I could see now that wasn't how it worked. The things that held me, that held my days in place, had to do with how I showed up for myself and for others, and what I paid attention to. In a very simple sense, our days, our lives, are what we pay attention

to. And tonight, my attention was woven deeply into a feeling of gratitude for friends and good food. The light was fading outside as I walked back to the pantry to bring out the pies. I stopped for a moment with one balanced in each hand and looked out through the kitchen window, across one yard and over the gate into my own, with the sky marked bright red from the setting sun. Friends become more important as you grow older. Maybe because

once you're not a kid anymore, you don't need friends in the way you did growing up. As an adult, a real friendship is probably the purest relationship a person can have. It exists solely because you care about each other, because you want good things for each other. As I listened to them talking and laughing across the table, I thought of that line of Oscar Wilde's, who, having friends, is poor.

I turned from the window, ready to bring out dessert. I had everything I needed. Friendsgiving. We'd come up with the idea over the fence in my backyard. Back at the beginning of the fall, when I was taking down the tomato cages in my garden, and my neighbor was raking the first of the fallen leaves in his yard, he'd called out to tell me that he'd made a soup with the last of my tomatoes and basil the night before.

I'd brought them over in a bushel basket and left them on his doorstep, hoping he could make good use of them before they went bad. He told me that he roasted them in his oven until they were blistered and just a bit charred, and then blended them with broth and sprinkled the top with plenty of fresh ground black pepper and ribbons of basil. I dropped my cages by the edge of the garden and plucked off my gloves as I strode over toward the fence.

I propped my elbows on its top rail to listen. Tell me more, I said, making him laugh. We were old friends, having both grown up right here. Each of us taking over our family homes when it was time. And one of our shared passions was food. We passed recipes back and forth, traded cookbooks, and ate from each other's gardens so much we eventually had a gate installed between our yards. I'd hear him unlatching it in the morning, a coffee cup in one hand, as he picked a few cucumbers to go in a salad for lunch. I'd cross into his yard in the evenings and fill a colander with the raspberries that grew all along one side of the yard

to make into jam for my morning toast. As he told me more about his tomato soup and croutons he'd made with a day-old loaf of bread, it made me think about the bread I used to make stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. The cafe downtown sold bags of bread ends. The cut-off bits that were too small or rounded to make a sandwich out of. And I would buy a bag or two and cut them up into cubes and let them dry on a baking sheet or toast them in the oven.

I must have gone quiet in my Thanksgiving musings, and my friend noticed. He propped his arm on his ray candle and cocked his head to one side to ask what was on my mind. Thanksgiving. It's going to be different this year, I said. He nodded slowly. Things change. Even the traditions we expect to go on forever can be interrupted. And I'd been mentally stumbling over the idea of the end of November, for a while now. Not sure what it would look like, or how it would feel.

He leaned his rake against the trunk of a crabapple tree that took up most of the back corner of the lot. Crab apples are excellent trees for climbing. They have long, low branches that run nearly level with the ground, and we'd climbed this one a hundred times as kids. He shook out a lawn bag and said, Let's host together this year. We'll find a few friends without plans, and we'll have a little friendsgiving. What do you think? The sun came out as we'd been talking,

and I shielded my eyes with one hand and smiled wide at him. Perfect. Why didn't we think of it before? He started catching up big handfuls of leaves and dropping them into the bag. And as long as we're changing things up, let's try some new recipes. We can make a couple new traditions. I pulled my garden gloves back on and propped my hands on my hips. I've got a dozen recipes I've been just waiting to find a reason to

make. I'll let you know what I come up with. I'd gone back to wrangling the tomato cages, and when the garden was put to bed, I'd waved over the fence and gone in to make a list. We spent the next couple of weeks exchanging cookbooks and torn out pages from magazines over the fence, calling up a few friends who we thought might be in the market for a different sort of holiday and dividing up the chores. We'd have the meal at his place. He had an ancient dining room table with leaves that could double its length if needed.

There would only be five or six of us, but we'd planned so many different dishes. We needed the serving space. On Thanksgiving morning, we had one last council of chefs over the gate in the backyard. Each of us a tall cup of coffee in our hands and the steam matching our breath in the cold morning air. I'd wanted to serve the meal on my grandmother's china and had been washing and carefully stacking the plates into a deep box to bring over in time to set the table.

He'd been watching videos about how to fold napkins in various fancy ways and still hadn't picked a style. I'd bought candles for the table, and he'd made a playlist for pre-dinner dinner and dessert. We laughed as we sipped our coffee, realizing that we might have overthought the details a bit. But we were having fun, and that was the point. We clinked cups and headed back into our respective kitchens to get on with it. Now, it was a point of contention between us as to when Thanksgiving dinner should be served. In my household, it had always been truly a dinner and came around 5 p.m., just as the sun was setting. In his family, everyone had been seated at the table no later than 1 in the afternoon. We'd split the difference and asked our friends to show up around three.

That way, we had plenty of time to cook, and everyone would have plenty of time to digest before bed. At 2.30, I was setting out the china. The silverware drawer had been full of mismatched forks, spoons, and knives. That seemed just about right for the day. So I carefully laid them out, lining up their stems like a butler in an English country house. The music was going,

and the candles were lit. I had a focaccia in the oven that I'd made by hand, pressing divots into the soft dough with my fingertips, where they caught olive oil and grains of sea salt and strips of sage I'd grown myself. I wanted our friends to smell it at the moment they opened the door, because there is no

scent quite as welcoming as fresh baked bread. Soon the first knock came. A friend, a bottle of wine. Another friend, a homemade pie. Another knock, two more for dinner, and a casserole dish wrapped in a kitchen towel to hold in the heat. We'd all gotten a bit spiffed up, and we toasted each other on having a very grown-up Thanksgiving. Along with the mismatched silverware,

we leaned into the idea that the meal didn't need to look like most other Thanksgivings. There was the focaccia and to go with it I'd made mushroom and wild rice soup thickened with a roux and seasoned with lots of fresh thyme. He'd made sheet trays of something we were calling Thanksgiving nachos,

for which he'd made homemade refried beans from a recipe that had taken nearly 24 hours to complete. I'd made smashed rather than mashed potatoes by parboiling a lot of smallish Yukon golds, then laying them out in the roasting pan and smashing them down with the underside of a drinking glass, splashing olive oil and seasoning all over and sliding them into the oven. We made Lebanese garlic sauce, whipped in the food processor to go with them. There was a plate of tiny fried cakes we'd made from diced peppers and hearts of palm and breadcrumbs and Old Bay seasoning. And there was a huge salad with dark green leaf lettuce,

and toasted pine nuts, and marinated red onion, and the simplest and best vinaigrette that was just a couple ingredients shaken together in a mason jar. After much testing, I'd finally, and controversially, converted completely from pumpkin pie to sweet potato pie, and two were cooling on a shelf in the pantry. Sitting at the table,

passing plates and refilling glasses, I was so happy to be where I was. It was different. Those long-held traditions had seemed like pillars holding up the year. And if they changed, if they didn't happen just as they always had, it had felt like perhaps the whole year would come crashing down. But I could see that wasn't how it worked. The things that held me,

that held my days in place, had to do with how I showed up for myself and for others, and what I paid attention to. In a very simple sense, our days, our lives, are what we pay attention to. And tonight, my attention was into a feeling of gratitude for friends and good food. The light was fading outside as I walked back to the pantry to bring out the pies. I stopped for a moment with one balanced in each hand and looked out through the kitchen window, across one yard and over the gate into my own, with the sky marked bright orange from the setting sun.

Friends become more important as you grow older. Maybe because once you're not a kid anymore, you don't need friends in the way you did growing up. As an adult, a real friendship is probably the purest relationship a person can have. It exists solely because you care about each other. Because you want good things for each other. As I listened to them talking and laughing across the table, I thought of that line of Oscar Wilde's,

who, having friends, is poor. I turned from the window, ready to bring out dessert. I had everything I needed. Sweet dreams.