Paper Flowers

Kathryn Nicolai (0:01)

Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Grown Ups, in which nothing much happens. You feel good, and then you fall asleep. I'm Kathryn Nicolai. I write and read all the stories you hear on Nothing much happens. Audio engineering is by Bob Wittersheim. My book, also called Nothing much happens, is available wherever books are sold. Thank you for your support. Busy minds need a place to rest, and that's what this is, a resting place. Just follow along with the sound of my voice. I'll tell the story twice and go a little slower the second time through. If you wake again later, think back through any part of the story you can remember. Even just saying the name of the story inside your head will help derail racing thoughts and direct you back to the resting place. Our story tonight is called Paper Flowers, and it's a story about a place to spend a cozy and creative afternoon. It's also about the magic of miniature things, having something to look forward to, and the fun of learning something new. Now, lights out, my friends. Curl up and get as comfortable as you can. Whatever you have done today, it is enough. Close the door on it and be done. Let's take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. And again, in. Let it out.

Good. Paper flowers. Across the street, at the bookshop, someone was sitting in the window seat. I'd been watching them for the last half hour or so, curled up with cushions propped all around. They'd been so lost in their book that I hadn't once seen their face. I squinted, leaned my elbows on the counter, and craned my neck forward, trying to make out the title. Must be a good book. Between us, a man with a push broom and rake was gathering last leaves of the season from the sidewalks. They'd nearly all fallen by now. I noticed a few skeins of yarn in the wrong bins, and came out from behind the counter to tuck them back into place. We'd had a busy morning. The colder days had led a lot of customers back to their creative hobbies. And I'd been selling yarn and crochet hooks and knitting needles all day. Next to the yarn, I tidied up the cross-point hoops and embroidery thread, and beside them the bolts of fabric. We had a whole section of buttons and zippers, and hook and eyes, and wonderfully sharp, heavy scissors. We carried some seasonal fabrics, and we're about to change out the autumn motifs for the holiday ones. I like that, stocking things that pointed toward the next season or holiday. I found it kept me excitingly looking forward to the near future. I ran my hand over a bit of cloth, dyed orange and yellow, printed with acorns and oak leaves. I was on my way back to the counter when the door opened and a customer came in, carried along on a gust of cool air. We said hello to each other and chatted about when we thought the first snow might fall. I was betting on before Thanksgiving. She said after. I left her to browse and turned back to the window to check on the reader across the street. Dang, they'd gone. Maybe they'd started to doze in the comfortable seat. I'd seen it before. And rather than snore in public, had packed it in and taken their new book home, where it could fall on their dozing chest in peace. Behind me, I heard my customer shifting boxes on a shelf, and went to see if I could be of some assistance. She was in the model section, full of boxes of self-contained projects. They were some of my favorite things in the shop. You could make classic models of cars and planes, gluing perfect miniature parts together, and carefully applying stickers, and painting on emblems. But we also had kits to make tiny street scenes. A Christmas tree in a city square, a green house filled with miniscule paper plants, a mysterious alleyway with real lights that fit between the books on a shelf, and gave you a glimpse into another world. I sidled up beside her as she stood with a box in each hand, evidently trying to decide which one to take home. And which one to relinquish back to the shelf. Hmm, I said, as I looked at the boxes. That is a tricky one. She nodded and waited for my professional opinion. I pointed to the one in her left hand, a bigger kit that would take many hours to complete. I've done this one, I said, as we looked at the cover together. It showed a library with two walls full of books, a tiny ladder that really moved on a track, and a rotating fireplace that gave a glimpse into a secret passage. It's a little fiddly, so you need a lot of patience, but when it's lit up on a shelf, it really is fascinating to look at lots of details. She nodded again, bit her lip, and we looked at the box in her right hand. This one is a little simpler, I said. It showed a coffee shop with an L-shaped counter and a couple tables set with cups and plates. For this one, most of the pieces are made for you, so it's more about gluing things into place, but that can be fun too. This one might be better if you don't have much time and just want to get back in the habit of crafting. Well, she said, what if I get them both? Start the ball rolling with the easy one, and then dig into the tricky one by the time we get snowed in. Smart thinking, I said. We laughed, and she followed me up to the counter. As I was wringing them up and tucking them into a brown paper handlebag, she picked up a flyer from a stack by the register and read it out loud. Crafternoon tea? She lifted an eyebrow to inquire just what that meant. I set her bag on the counter and dropped her receipt inside. Yes, it's later today, actually. We have one every Thursday. We serve tea and teach a craft, and then folks spend a couple of hours working on it. Last week, we taught a few origami shapes, and I gestured to the front window, where chains of folded paper cranes in every color and pattern hung. Next week, we'll be starting on a series of pottery. We even have a kiln in the back that we can fire off the pieces in. I might have sounded a bit proud of our shop, but I guess that was right. I was a bit proud. And this afternoon, she asked, her eyes open wide with intrigue. This crafternoon, I chuckled, we're making crepe paper flowers. And I took a vase of them from behind the counter and set them down in front of her. They were truly beautiful. And I was pretty impressed with myself with how they came out. They were all in shades of ivory and dusty pink and salmon. Some were peonies with layer upon layer of petals, which grew very slightly in size as the rose progressed. If you peeked carefully at its center, you could see the hidden yellow stamen. And its stem and sepals were a realistic dark green. There were also poppies in a shade of orange-ish red with a single row of fragile-looking petals. Then a few pink roses, whose petals were curled back as if it was nearly at the end of its bloom. I liked teaching crafts like these. They looked quite impressive, and they were, but they weren't terribly difficult to make. And my crafters would leave with something beautiful and a bit of confidence. My customer slipped the flyer into her bag, and took one more look at the flowers. Well, she said, now I know what to do with my Thursdays. I waved her out and noticed, as I looked across the street, another reader propped in the cushions at the bookshop. I smiled as I headed into the back to gather the supplies for our crafternoon.