← Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
One Good Thing - A Story about Finding Rest in a New Place
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Hey, it's Eric. Before we begin tonight's episode, just a quick reminder. You're about to hear a few ads that help to support Listen to Sleep. If you'd rather drift off without them, you can join Listen to Sleep plus and get every episode ad free, plus bonus stories and meditations. Just go to ListenToSleep.com and click on support to learn more. Hello friend, it's Eric. Welcome back to Listen to Sleep. This week, one of my best friends went out of town for a few days and his two dogs, Sierra and Kaya, came to stay with us here on the mountain. Now Bode and Joey have opinions about guests. Bode, who is large and old and has the particular gravity of a dog who has seen many things, generally regards guests the way a gracious innkeeper regards travelers warmly, but with a watchful eye on the silverware. Joey has no such reservations. Joey is delighted by all arrivals, all always without exception and as a matter of principle. Sometimes he'll bark a little when they first show up, but he loves visitors. What I didn't know was how Sierra would feel about staying here, away from her dad for a few days. She has lots of feelings and I wanted to make sure she felt loved and comfortable, and I'm pretty sure she did. This is a cozy story about dogs finding their place to sleep, and I hope it's exactly what you need tonight. Before we get started, just a quick reminder. If you're enjoying these stories and want to support the podcast, you can do that by joining. Listen to Sleep plus gives you access to over 500 episodes ad free, including bonus episodes, audiobooks and early releases. Your support makes a huge difference in keeping this going and you can learn more about all the great perks supporters get@listentosleep.com support. There's a link in the show notes. Let's take a deep breath in and out. Just letting go of the day, feeling the weight of gravity pulling you deep down into the mattress. And another deep breath in and out. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. This is your time. Quiet time. One more deep breath in and out. If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay, just let yourself drift off. One good thing the cabin knows itself by dark, and so does Bode. He knows where the floor creaks by the wood stove just to the left where it has a slight warp from an old winter when the wood got too dry. He knows where the lamplight reaches and where it doesn't. He knows the weight of a late winter evening, how it settles into the corners of a room. He is 10 years old and he has lived here his entire life, and the cabin and Bode have, over the years, come to a very comfortable arrangement. He knows the worn place on the rug in front of the couch. He knows the sound of the refrigerator cycling on in the kitchen, and he knows even the smallest sound, the one that means the humans have finished moving around for the night. He has lived in this cabin his entire 10 years. He moves through it at night without hesitation, from his spot near the door to the water bowl in the kitchen and back again, the way you move through a place you could navigate and in complete darkness, which he has many times. Joey is younger and he knows the cabin differently. Where Bode's knowledge is deep and still, Joey's is bright and quick, the location of every toy, every smell spot by the door, every angle from which to see the driveway. Joey knows the cabin the way you know a game you love, all its best features, the moves that work, the places where something interesting might happen. And it was Joey who heard the car first. He lifted his head from his spot near the wood stove and ears forward. Bodie, who had been watching the window in the slow way he watched things, turned his gaze toward the driveway. The headlights made a brief geometry of the trees before the engine cut doors, the sound of leashes being unclipped, voices, and then the door. Sierra came in the way she always came, into new places with her nose working, her eyes moving in a slow and careful arc, her tail doing the polite, gentle wave of a dog who was raised well and knows how to signal good intentions. She is large, tan, and brindle, with the kind of face that looks thoughtful even when it isn't. She moves slowly, not slowly, out of uncertainty, well, not entirely slowly, the way some dogs simply are, the ones who take things in before they act on them, who would rather understand a room then race through it. Kaya came in behind her, already curious, already ready. Kaya is smaller, a Chihuahua lab mix, tan with a confidence that sits easy on her, like something she was born wearing. She has been Sierra's companion for for years, and she knows Sierra the way you know someone after thousands of small days together, not by thinking about it but in the quiet certainty of the body. Bodie received them in the doorway with the dignified calm of a host who has made his peace with visitors. He stood still and let them come to him, which they did briefly, the nose to nose greeting of dogs with no quarrel. Sierra took her time with him, and he let her. Joey came forward with somewhat more enthusiasm. He was not precisely bad bouncing, but he was the shape of something that wanted to bounce and was doing its best to hold that in. Sierra read him correctly and took a small step back, not in alarm, just in the measured way of a dog who prefers things at a slightly slower pace. Joey adjusted, impressed by nothing so much as his own ability to adjust. Kaya touched noses with Joey and then moved past him into the room, already investigating. Sierra looked at the room, the room looked back, and Sierra kept looking. The evening moved at the pace of late winter. The humans made dinner. The dogs settled into their various positions around the kitchen the way dogs do, some hoping, some simply present, some doing the math on the proximity and and the payoff. Joy did hope with his whole face. Body sat near the back and received whatever came to him with the quiet dignity of a dog who does not beg but does not refuse. Kaya stationed herself at a precise point between the counter and and the table that she had identified as optimal. Sierra stood near the door to the porch between the kitchen and the living room, watching all of this with her careful accounting eyes. The wood stove put out its warmth. The lamp on the side table made the room gold. Joey, who had given up on trying to interest the visitors in a game, curled himself into his spot near the stove with the pragmatic ease of a dog who accepts reality swiftly and without resentment. He made a small circle. He lay down. He sighed. This is an underrated pleasure, the sigh a dog makes when it gives itself fully to rest. Not theatrical, just the body releasing what it was holding. Kaya found the dog bed near the far wall and settled into it. She turned twice, considered the turn, turned once more for completeness. She put her chin on her paws. Bodie moved to his corner near the window, the good corner, the one where he could see the whole room and the door both. He lowered himself with the careful deliberateness of an old dog who respects his own joints. And then he settled and Sierra stood in the center of the room. She looked at Joey. She looked at Kaya. She looked at Bodhi. She looked at the couch, the long couch against the far wall, the one with the worn arm, the one that caught the lamplight along its back cushions. Her head tilted slightly. Some small thing moved through her expression, some small internal rearrangement. She crossed the room at her own measured pace. She put her front paws up first, then stepped fully onto the couch with a careful navigation of the cushions. She turned once and she found the spot the right spot, the one near the middle where the cushions had the most give, the one from which she could see if she lifted her head slightly. The whole room at once. Bodie in his corner, Joey by the stove, Kaya on the bed. She lay down. Her eyes stayed open. Kaya, without looking up from where she lay, shifted her position three inches closer to the base of the couch. Sierra looked at the room for a long, still moment, and then she closed her eyes. Body did not move from his corner. He watched the room go quiet the way it always did, the small sequence of sounds that meant everyone was settling, the micro adjustments and size, the body learning what position it would hold until morning. He knew this sequence as well as he knew anything. He also noticed that Sierra had been the last to close her eyes. He filed this the way he filed things, without conclusion and with patience. The wood stove ticked, the refrigerator cycled on. In the kitchen, someone's paw twitched in a dream. Joey's probably. Four dogs in a room, the sounds of their breath. The lamp stayed on for a while longer, then went dark. The next day was a very good one. There was a walk in the afternoon when the light was going gold and long across the slope, some dried leaves lifting briefly when the dogs passed through them and then settling again. Four dogs on a trail who all had different ideas about the pace. Bodie at the measured center, Joey ahead and then doubling back and then ahead again, Kaya moving fluidly between front and back as if she were checking on everyone. Sierra near the rear, stopping sometimes to smell something in the brush, taking her time. The evening brought the particular tiredness that comes after an afternoon outside in the late winter air, the pleasant weight of it, the way the dogs came in and shook themselves and then went directly to their own spots. After a stop at the water bowl, the room felt easy. Then Kaya and Joey had a brief game, nothing elaborate, just the small choreography of two dogs who had decided each other is acceptable. A play bow, a short chase around the coffee table, and then mutual dissolution back into their own orbits. Sierra watched this from the rug, her tail making one slow sweep, then another. Joey tried twice during the afternoon to interest Sierra in a game. The first time he did a full play bow in front of her, front legs, flat back, end up the universal offer, and held it for what was by any measure an embarrassingly long time. Sierra just looked at him. She was not unkind about it. She simply looked at him the the way you look at someone who has said something in a language you don't speak and then looked away. Joey considered this. He tried again, briefly with a toy. Sierra sniffed the toy once with genuine courtesy, and then lay her head back down, down on her paws, so Joey sat down next to her. He stayed there for a while, not doing anything in particular, and after some minutes Sierra's tail made one slow sweep across the floor. Joey's tail wagged. They stayed like that until Kaya came over and lay down on Sierra's other side, and the three of them spent the rest of the afternoon just existing together in a patch of winter light, which is its own kind of game. When the evening settled, when the humans had done their evening things and the wood stove was going again and Joey had resumed his spot and body his corner, Sierra did her accounting of the room more quickly than the night before. Her eyes moved from the doorway to the stove, to Joey, to Bodie, to the dog bed where Kaya had already positioned herself closer to the couch than last night. Sierra looked at the room, the room looked back, and then Sierra crossed to the couch, 20 minutes earlier than the night before. Not that anyone was counting, but Body noticed. He noticed the same way he noticed everything that happened twice in a row, with the quiet attention of a dog who has learned that the second time something happens, it might just mean something. She found her spot without circling this time. Well, she circled once, briefly, more out of form than necessity. Then she lay down and adjusted her head slightly so she could see the whole room, Body in his corner, Joey by the stove, Kaya already there, already arranged, already settling into deep sleep with the ease of someone who has made her peace with her particular patch of dog bed. Sierra looked at each of them in turn, and then she closed her eyes. One of Bodhi's ears moved a slow swivel towards something outside, some night sound in the forest. The sound had been nothing or nothing to concern anyone. He knew the difference inside. Four dogs breathing, each breath its own rhythm, its own depth, Joey's quick and shallow, a dog who runs in his sleep, Kaya's even and low, Sierra's slower now, longer, the particular breath of a dog who has found her place and released it to the night. The wood stove ticked. The cabin settled around them. Bodie was still awake when everyone else was not. He didn't know what he was close to understanding. He just knew he was close to something. He watched Sierra's side rise and fall in the lamp light. Her ear twitched once toward some small sound, a shift in the fire maybe, or the creek of the house cooling and then stilled. She didn't open her eyes so he lowered his head onto his paws. The third night was the last night Sierra and Kaya would go home tomorrow. Bodi could feel this as he settled into his corner early. The day had been quiet, a short walk, sleeping in patches of afternoon light, the kind of day that accumulates gently and leaves you feeling full of something soft as evening falls. Joey had spent a long portion of the afternoon curled against Kaya's side on the rug. They had negotiated this position with the wordless ease of dogs who have decided definitively that they like each other. Sierra had lain nearby, watching them, her tail making those slow sweeps. Dinner came. The dogs arranged themselves around the kitchen with now familiar logic, Joey in his spot, Kaya in hers, Bodie receiving what came to him, Sierra watching from the doorway with her careful eyes, the careful eyes of someone who is almost comfortable here, who has been almost comfortable for three days, building it quietly, one good night at a time. When the humans finished and the kitchen went quiet, when the wood stove caught and the lamp came on and the evening became unmistakably evening, Sierra crossed the room. She did not hesitate at the doorway. She did not stand in the center and look. She walked to the couch with a straightness and a calm that had not been there on the first night, that had been only a promise on the second, and that was now on the third. Simply herself. She stepped up. She turned once, the one circle that was still the form of the thing she needed, and she found her spotthe spot she had found twice now, the spot she had found a few times now, the spot she knew. She lifted her head, Bodie in his corner, Joey settling near the stove with a sound that was half sigh, half grunt, the sound of a dog who loves his spot and never takes it for granted. Kaya. Kaya was already moving, not toward her own bed, toward the dog bed by the couch, the place she had been the last two nights, the place she arrived at before Sierra even began to look, as if she already knew where Sierra would need her to be, which she did. Sierra's eyes moved slowly from Bodie to Joey to Kaya, the slow arc of accounting, a deliberate roll call of the room, and Bodie watching this, watching her eyes move from him to Joey to to Kaya, and then, still watching the way something in her face went quiet when the count was done, watching her settle into the couch cushion with the ease of an animal who has found finally its right place. She had been counting every night from the moment she arrived. She had been counting them one and two and three, Bodie and Joey and Kaya. And when all three were accounted for, when she could see with her own eyes that everyone she loved was present and at rest, only then could she let herself rest too. She had not been anxious. She had not been afraid of the cabin or the dark or the strange sounds of a house that was not her house. She had simply needed to know. She had needed to be sure. She had needed to see with her own eyes that everyone was where they were supposed to be. It was not worry. It was love. Bodie put his chin on his paws and he considered this in the way that old dogs consider things, which is less like thinking and more like staying very still with something until it becomes clear. He thought about what it meant to love a room. He had loved this room for ten years. In his way, through the gentle realization of deep belonging, he knew every sound it made and every way it changed. He knew it so well that its safety for him was almost automatic, so woven in that he barely noticed it anymore. But Sierra did not have ten years in this room. She had three nights. And so she had found a different way. She had found her one good thing, the single thing that gave her what she needed to close her eyes in an unfamiliar place, the view of the room, the count everyone accounted for. And it had worked for her body. Didn't know exactly what to make of what he'd learned. He wasn't sure he needed to make anything of it. He just held it in the way you hold something you've been given without knowing why, carefully, with the sense that it might matter later. Joey's paw twitched once in some dream that was probably about running. Kaya was teasing, deeply asleep. The cabin was still, the wood stove giving off a gentle warmth, and each of them were safe, each one accounted for. Sierra let out a deep sigh as she settled in to her one good thing. Thing. Perhaps you have one good thing, too. Something that tells you the night is in order, that the people you love are where they're supposed to be, that you can stop holding the room together with your attention now, stop doing your quiet accounting of the world. Stop watching and counting and keeping and simply rest. Maybe it's a sound, the soft breathing of someone sleeping near you, or a particular creak the house makes when it settles in the evening. Maybe it's a warmth, a blanket's weight, a body close to yours or a body somewhere else in the house that you can feel there even without seeing. Maybe it's a view, the particular angle from which you can see the door, the window, the small lamp left on in the hallway. You're allowed to find your one good thing. You're allowed to need it. So find your one good thing tonight. And when you find it, when you've done your accounting, when you've seen with your own eyes that everything is where it should be, you can do what Sierra does. You can close your eyes and let yourself sleep. Rest well, friend. Good night.