An Attic Full Of Memories | Relaxing Story For Sleep

Hey, Jeffrey here and welcome back to Night Falls. I hope you're doing well tonight and ready for another sleepy story. I'd also like to welcome our new subscribers who have joined this month. I hope you're looking forward to this Sunday's premium episode. We're going to be back with LaTisha Keane for another cozy mystery. You may not know this about me, but I actually grew up in a hotel. It was a very old Victorian building and in spite of one of the rooms being supposedly haunted, there was only one place I was scared to go. The attic. If I had to get something from there, I would charge up the stairs, race to grab whatever I needed and then leap back down the stairs, hurdling five or six at a time. I don't think I took a breath in between. Thankfully, the attic in tonight's story isn't packed with that same fear, but instead filled with cozy nostalgia. Let's join a man as he wades through the memories his mother has been storing away for him over the years in her attic full of boxes. As he stitches memories into a quilt, he remembers how even the most ordinary of lives is made extraordinary by the fun and love that is peppered through its days. Before we begin, here's the quick ad break that keeps this free content possible. To go out free, subscribe via the link in the show notes. Maltesers bunnies, they're back. But like a hot person on an escalator going the other way, they're not here for long. They're a temporary thrill, like those two days you were a morning person or a bank holiday or that TV show that criminally only got one season or even that 24 hour post where your bum looked outrageously good. Some treats you just have to enjoy while they last. Maltesers bunnies, here but only for Easter. Maltesers, look on the light side. At AXA Health Insurance, we build our teams with people who care. So when you need us, we're here to support you. For cover that cares, search AXA Health Insurance. Pre-existing conditions are not covered. All right, now back to Night Falls. It turns out my mother has been storing our lives in the attic for decades. She never lets anyone up there, but a few months back she heard a noise in the roof at night. My mother is a determined, resilient woman, a tower of strength. But it seems even she can be sent cowering into a corner by the possibility of a mouse. And so I fetched the pole with the hook on the end, reaching up to pull down the hatch that would fold out the stairs. They cascaded down towards me gently, just as with everything else in the house, they operated in slow motion. My mother stood at the bottom, wringing her hands. She wanted to say something I could tell, but her lips kept forming into words that never came. I realized what it must have been as soon as my head was level with the boxes. My head poking into the attic turned an automatic light on, and before me lay an entire city of boxes, some in teetering skyscrapers. Then there were the suitcases lined up like terraced houses, shoeboxes in a line outside like cars on the street. There was nothing disorderly about the stuff. I swear, the tower of hat boxes even acted as a roundabout in a junction between streets of boxes. But the quantity was extraordinary. I pulled myself up and traveled slowly along the streets and avenues and alleys that made up this storage city in my mother's attic. I peered into a few, pulling back the flaps to reveal clothes that went back to my childhood. A pile of soft towels, sets of neatly folded bedsheets. In each box was a small sachet of lavender, and with a smile, my mind flashed back to the garden, where mother had insisted on growing row after row of the purple-gray bushes. She had said it was to remind her of Provence, a place I knew she had never been, but we had never questioned this eccentricity nor her dedication to harvesting the lavender each year. She would hang it in bunches from the beams in the kitchen, waiting until it was completely dried, before scooping handfuls into tiny sachets that she made with a needle and thread, while listening to Beethoven and Bach and Chopin filling the room. Until this moment, I had never known where the piles of sachets ended up. I found the mouse behind the box of cushion covers. It was almost as if he was waiting for me, and he held up his arms in a tiny surrender, only missing a small white flag. I held out a hand and he stepped onto my palm, curling his tail around himself, cupping the other hand above him. I slowly descended the stairs. Mother backed away as she saw my hands and guessed what they were concealing. I took him out to the garden and to the farthest of the lavender bushes. I figured at least he'd feel at home there with the familiar scent. The mouse stepped off my palm and onto the damp earth as calmly as he had stepped on in the first place, a sense that this was inevitable, and perhaps it was all some game he had been playing with us. By the time I went back inside, Mother had settled down on her favourite chair in the living room and composed herself with tea, the cup and saucer, now resting on the broad arm of the chair. I've always had a plan for it, you know, she said to me, casting her eyes towards the ceiling and the attic beyond. Your life story is up there, she said, settling into her theme. I wasn't sure whether what she spoke was the truth or a rapidly cobbled together justification for the city made of boxes. I want you to make a patchwork blanket of your life and it'll do you good. She said it so matter-of-factly as if this was a normal undertaking and as if I wanted to look back over my life. It'd have been nothing extraordinary, nor so dull as to make it, by the sheer extent of its dullness, extraordinary. It was just a life, lived from one day to the next, the same way everybody does it. No moments stood out to me and I told her as much. Every life is special. She insisted, make the patchwork blanket, you'll see. I left that day with her old, heavy sewing machine and a couple of boxes she had directed me towards. I had no idea how to use the machine nor how these boxes contained the stories of my life she was convinced were there. But it was easier to take everything and to continue arguing with her. Bonnie, of course, thought it was a wonderful idea, but then Bonnie's life revolves around the sentimental. She is the one who stowed the children's wrist labels from the hospital where they were born, and their first teeth, and the drawings that graced our fridge before being upgraded, thankfully by better versions. She still has the receipt from our first date and the menu from our wedding and keeps a cassette tape of our first dance. She says it would be wrong to get the CD version because there weren't CDs when we were married and this is much more authentic. This cassette tape, alongside the mix tapes I first made for her back in college where we met, when I was trying to woo this beautiful, intelligent woman who was so out of my league, I had no right looking in her direction, it's the only reason we still have a huge, clunky tape player in the living room. She says it makes her feel young, but it just makes me see the generations of technology that have come since, and it makes my bones creak at the thought. So it was one wet weekend with Bonnie's insistence that I pulled the sewing machine from its box. I set it up on the kitchen table, staring at the unfamiliar dials and peering into hidden compartments. It took a few hours searching for videos online to work out how to thread it and to run cotton wool from a reel onto the little spool and how to hide one of the spools beneath the needle. I used a tea towel for some practice, stitching lines that wandered here and there, but slowly became straighter and straighter. I kept forgetting to raise and lower the foot on the machine and had to re-thread the needle and start a row again, but I got there in the end. I decided the patchwork quilt would be a simple design. I drew a square template on the inside of a cut-up cornflakes packet and then made another smaller square that fitted inside it. And then I reached into the boxes that Mother had made me take away and drew out the first items, cutting them into the size of the larger square and then tracing the smaller square inside with a pen. I had a line to follow as I sewed. I cut and drew without much thought to the materials or the items, and it was only when I picked up the pieces to start sewing that I considered what they were. A pale blue soft brushed cotton piece was the first. Pinned to the remaining material, I found a note from my mother. Your first clothing, home from hospital, it said. As her hands had become more and more determined to do their own thing, Mother had taken to writing everything in capital letters. The lines shook a little, but there was still her own brand of unmistakable neatness to it all. I brushed my finger against that soft cotton and imagined my mother dressing me as a tiny newborn in that and how she would have held me in her arms as my father drove proudly home from the hospital. This was before the days of car seat and I imagined her giving me a running commentary as we drove home. There's the park, she would have whispered, and that will be your school one day, and here's the cafe we like to go to. I'll take you there sometime. And here we are, little one. Here we are at home. I can almost see my father stepping out of the car and walking around to open the door for her. You would have picked up the bag she'd have taken to the hospital and walked behind her into the house. I think she would have taken me upstairs to the nursery they had made for me, and I pick up the second square I've cut. Your first blanket, it said in those determined spidery block capitals. It was a pale green and so soft it felt as light as a feather. I can imagine my mother laying me down and then sitting in the rocking chair and watching me. My father would have hung back and certain what to do and what part he needed to play. That would become clearer later. I took the two squares and matched my two pened lines together, determined to make this as neat as possible. I leaned on the foot pedal and pressed softly, easing the needle gently up and down. Although it wasn't something I had ever thought of doing, now that I was involved, this wasn't a task that I needed to hurry. I finished the line and then went back and forth a few times before finally lifting the foot and cutting the threads. Two squares, the first two showing the first days of my life. Looking at them, I remembered the first time Bonnie and I brought Tabitha home and then Simon and finally little Andrew, fully grown now of course and a willowy six feet four away at university, but forever in our family known as Little Andrew. I remembered how Bonnie had always known from the start just what to do and just how to do it and how I had hung back a little. Unsure. I smiled to think of my father going through the same thing thirty years before me, a gentle giant of a man who could probably have held me securely in a single hand. The next pieces were from the first outfits my mother dressed me in and I began to recognize some from the photographs she kept stored in the old biscuit tin at the back of the dresser. There was a red jumper for my first birthday and she had pinned one of those photographs to it, me smiling behind a cake she had made to look like a train. Something stirred in my mind and I remembered more of a sensation than anything else of being taken in a pram down to a train station and rocked gently on the platform as the trains rattled past. It was the bustle of the station that would send me to sleep and the gentle hiss of brakes and building turns of the wheel going faster and faster as the train pulled away. That had been my early companions for afternoon naps. The sound of a whistle as a conductor gave a warning that a train was soon leaving, followed by a sequence of doors being slammed shut, people calling out goodbyes that disappeared into the noise of the train's departure. I remember the blue and white striped flannel hooded jumper that comes next from the box. I remember wearing it on beaches in the sunshine, standing in it beside rock pools and peering into them to see deep red anemones with fronds waving slowly this way and that. I could watch the world of a rock pool for hours, seeing fish dart from one side to the other and crabs take a few scuttling steps before squatting down into the sand, blending in and for a moment becoming quite invisible again. I remember leaping from rock to rock, from boulder to boulder, imagining castles and kingdoms among the shapes. I remember my father following close behind and then, as the years went on, how he would be further and further back until finally, one day, he stayed on the beach with my mother and I was left to explore by myself. I remember looking back to see they were still there, then daring to go behind a rock and out of view, peering cautiously to see them still in place on their picnic rug, hiding behind sunglasses and books. And I remember doing the same with my own children and how the sunglasses and books were just props and how I peered secretly from behind them to see where Tabatha and Simon and little Andrew went, catching my breath when they went behind boulders and holding it until their blonde heads and tanned bodies appeared once more. The games we play that we don't know others are playing too. I carefully cut squares from my first school uniform, one each from a white shirt and a navy blazer. I remember the first day I walked through the gate, when everyone seemed to be bigger than me and how I clutched the handle of my black bag a little tighter and tried to stop my bottom lip from wobbling. Mother waved at me from the gateway, all smiles and bright eyes and excitement for me, and I remember the relief I felt as I entered the classroom for the first time and Mrs. Melody, we somehow never forget the name of our first teacher, ushered me in with a sweet smile and a gentle, supportive hand on my shoulder. Looking back, I know the game Mother played that day, because I know how I teared up as Tabatha stepped through the school gates for the first time. It was the first moment that I really knew she was growing up. I carefully added the shirt and the blazer to the growing row of squares and memories. My first scout uniform came next, a khaki green square cut from the shirt and a red and white striped one from the scarf I wore around my neck. I turned the little leather woggle over in my hand, chuckling as I realized I hadn't thought of the word in decades. When does woggle ever come into conversation? I made a note to mention it to my mother, as I knew it would make her smile with me. I spent every Friday evening with the skites, heading to the village hall to learn about putting up tents and walking in the woods and starting fires when you didn't have matches. The first weekend we went away, I remember unfurling my sleeping bag, feeling very small and very lost. And the note from my mum tucked into the hood, wishing me a wonderful trip and how she couldn't wait to hear all about it when I got home. For years she had done that, leaving me notes in lunchboxes or tucked into textbooks and later when I moved away sent on the back of postcards and in colorful envelopes. My first day of university, my exams, my first day of work, the evening of my wedding to Bonnie, she had been there for all those moments. And I realized that I'd started keeping them all at some point and sort of wished I still had that one from the first weekend with the scouts. But I'd been embarrassed the other boys might find it, so after reading it ten times over while crouched behind a tree, I buried it under a pile of leaves. I cut squares from sats of cricket whites from my first rugby kit. From the cloth bag I'd always used to take my swimming stuff into school. Weddens days. It was weddens days we had swimming, the whole class tripping together in a long, weaving line across to the public pool where we splashed madly up and down, whether the sun was shining or rain was pouring from the sky. I remember the chlorine stinging my eyes and learning to pull goggles tight onto my face. We were shown how to float on our backs, while incompletely still and gazing up at the shifting clouds. The noise of the world made into a distant, dull nothingness as the water filled our ears. I remember teaching Tabitha the same old trick, holding my arms under her back and slowly, slowly moving them down and away into the water so she could float by herself. And then she, in turn, had taught Simon and little Andrew, taking her big sister duties so very seriously. In return, the boys had splashed her and playfully pushed her under and delighted in making her shriek. She took on the role of harassed older sister well, exaggerating and playing along with the games. By the time Bonnie looked in on me that evening, my life had been laid out before her in a series of squares sewn carefully together. We ran through them one by one, her sharing stories she had never shared before, and me finding moments that had, until then, been quite forgotten. There are always memories tucked away that only emerge at the right time, prompted by a scent or a sight or a sound that rings a little bell. When we reached the squares that showed my college days, Bonnie paused me for a moment and disappeared, only to emerge triumphantly with the mixtape side made her. The cassette player clicked and turned, and then the music emerged. The stories of the squares matching the tunes that had meant everything all those years ago. She admitted playing an unwitting part in the quilt. For over the years my mother had asked her for items here and there, saying they were worn or suitable or unneeded and she would donate them to the local charity. And Bonnie had handed them over, never realising their real destination as my mother's city of boxes in the attic. She drew in her breath as she smoothed her fingers over the shimmering white satin that had been her wedding dress. A square I had carefully taken from between the folds that fell around the floor, hidden enough to not damage the dress. Our wedding song was popped into the old cassette player and we danced slowly, my arms around her and her head on my shoulder, just the way we had danced all those years ago. I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent and kissed the top of her head, rolling back the years as we revisited what felt like a different lifetime. There was one more square I wanted to add and I needed Bonnie's help with this. In the final box my mother had added two knitting needles and a ball of wool with a note that simply said, your grandmother. My grandmother had lived with us for the first years of my life and she had spent hour after hour sitting in her favourite chair, knitting scarves and hats and blankets. She sat slightly hunched, leaning forwards a little, her eyes darting between the needles and the television as her favourite shows accompanied her through the afternoons. She had tried to teach me to knit once but I ended up with more knots than knitting and we had given up that endeavour. I'd learned to plait bread from her though and make a cherry pie that made you close your eyes it tasted so good. And she had been the one who always straightened my tie before I left for school in the morning and hung my blazer on the hook when I came back in the evening. Tiny actions of enormous love. So Bonnie sat me down at the table and took her own needles and wool and showed me how to move them this way and that to make a roll. It took all my concentration but I was determined to add a tribute to my grandmother as the final square on my blanket, the final piece in the puzzle. I clicked the needles and after a great pause I clacked the needles and slowly, slowly the last square came together. I had imagined doing something complicated as my grandmother would, perhaps adding stripes or a star in the centre, but it took everything to create a plain green square in rough rows. There was my life laid out in a blanket. Nothing too extraordinary but full of wonderful moments that I had nearly forgotten. I would take it around to my mum's tomorrow and together we would go through it and share everything. I would tell her how I knew the games that were played when children headed out onto the rocks and parents hid behind books and sunglasses on a beach. I would tell her of those first goodbyes at the school gates and what was tucked behind the smiles. In years to come nobody would have any real reason to remember me or my life but what did that matter when here was the proof that mine had been filled with all these moments and times that had shaped me. Without everything that passed, without the good times and the bad times, I wouldn't be the person I was today. I was cast back to a classroom to Mrs Anderson who taught us English. I remember her reading a line from Hamlet aloud and how she said about it as she did so many lines. You may not understand it now but you will one day and it's important that you keep it with you for the moment you need it. And then she read putting down her book and staring off into the distance in that way of hers. There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough you them how we will. I looked at the patchwork blanket of my past and smiled to think of what was still to come and of the little mouse that had led me there in the first place. Whatever was out there for me, I was ready for it, armed with the peace of knowing that the world will always work itself out for us. We'll leave our story there for tonight. I hope you enjoyed our nostalgic story. Maybe you'll have a dream filled with memories tonight or maybe make a patchwork blanket of your own. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well.