I'm getting older. I know I am. Look at the facts.I've started taking a very keen interest in birds. I saw a northern flicker with a polka dot belly yesterday. And the simple fact that I'm telling you this, and that I think you will be interested, means I am getting old. I do puzzles. I used to go out at night. I used to be cool.Well, a little cool. Now, I do puzzles. And I love them.When I'm working on a puzzle, I don't think about anything else. My whole nervous system calms down. When I go to bed, I sleep so much better because I'm calm. And so I have all the first-hand experience necessary to bring you tonight's very sleep inducing story. We're going to visit three different people in one small town. And watch as a single puzzle passes between them and connects them. It's very cozy. And it's going to do exactly what a good puzzle does. It will occupy your mind just enough to let everything else go quiet. Which brings me to the important part. Please make sure that you are somewhere safe before we go any further. This episode contains hypnotherapy and relaxation techniques. And you should never listen from anywhere that you need to stay alert. And if these episodes have been helping you sleep, please consider leaving a rating or a review. And I know you're tired.And that's okay. But if you think of it tomorrow, it would mean a great deal. Now, let's get you settled. If you're not already lying down, do that now. Let your body sink into the mattress and take a moment to actually arrange yourself. Shift your pillow until your head feels properly supported. Not tipped too far back or too far forward. Just resting. Let your arms settle. Let your legs fall where they want to fall. This is your bed. And your body knows it well. Give yourself a moment to find its perfect position. And let's breathe. Take a slow breath in. Just a long, easy inhale that fills your lungs. And then let it go. Make that exhale a little bit longer than your inhale. That simple difference. Breathing out for longer than you breathe in. It's one of the most effective things you can do to tell your nervous system that you're safe. Let's do that again. A slow breath in. And that nice, long breath out. And one last time. In. And then out. Beautiful. With each exhale, feel your body releasing a little more of what it's been holding. Let your shoulders release that tension. The tension from your very long day. Make sure your hands are soft and loose. And the muscles of your face. Those small, busy muscles around your eyes and your mouth. Let them soften now. Let them go. Feel that loosening moving down through your neck, your chest, and your arms. Settling all the way down to your fingertips. There's nowhere to be. Nothing you have to do. Nothing to solve or remember. Just this breath. And then the next one. And the story that's waiting for you. And if you're ready, let's go to Clarenceville. Lois gets home later than she should. She intended, which is most nights. Today there was a funding crisis. And she had solved it quietly before lunch without anyone noticing there had been a problem. She has worked at the hospital for 19 years. And she loves it. She never wanted to marry. Never wanted a full house and the complicated calendar. She wanted this. The work that mattered. The apartment with the river view. And the life that was entirely hers. The cat is sitting in the hallway when she opens the door. Tail moving slowly back and forth like a feather duster. Her blue eyes fixed on Lois with an expression that suggests she hasn't eaten in several days and may not survive. She is cream colored and extravagantly fluffy and convinced the apartment is hers. Lois feeds her first. She changes out of her work clothes. Puts on soft jeans and an old t-shirt, makes herself something simple to eat. The community radio station she's listened to since university fills the apartment at low volume. She pours a glass of wine. And then she takes the puzzle from the shelf. She came to puzzles late and reluctantly. Her mother did them for years at the kitchen table. And Lois had always thought that was something old people did. She's not sure when her opinion changed or whether she simply became, somewhere along the way, what she used to think an old person was. Either way, she doesn't care. Because puzzles do something that nothing else quite manages. They ask just enough of her mind to crowd everything else out. And by the time she puts the last piece in place and goes to bed, she sleeps the way she hasn't slept since she was a child. She found this one earlier that week at the hobby shop on Clement Street. She'd moved along the shelves, considering and rejecting, until the travel trailer stopped her. On the box, she saw it parked at a lakeside in late afternoon light, mountains in the background, and around it, a little world. A striped chair, bright potted plants, and strung between two trees. A line of warm gold lights, glowing against the blue of the evening. She tucked it under her arm without any further thought. She works on it at the kitchen island, the cat asleep on the stool at the end. The radio, playing, the river doing its quiet thing beyond the windows. She starts with the border, as always. Straight edges first, and somewhere in the fitting of the third piece to the fourth. Her job at the hospital recedes in her mind. She works on it every evening for nearly two weeks. The mountains first, then the water, which fights her, then the trailer, the bright pots, the striped chair, and on the last evening, the string of lights. She takes a picture of it and then takes it apart. She posts the picture to the Clarenceville Puzzlers page. Just under 40 members. Puzzles moving quietly around the community from table to table. And by morning, a woman named Bethany has replied. They swap on Saturday, outside of the coffee shop. Bethany goes home with the travel trailer. Lois goes home with a Japanese garden. The travel trailer is about to land somewhere very different, louder, warmer in a different way, and considerably more crowded. Bethany's house is never quiet. There are two teenagers still at home, and the two who have moved out have a habit of moving back in again. Her husband, Dale, works at the garage on Route 9 during the day, and he works on other people's cars in the driveway most nights. Which means his customers have a way of drifting through the kitchen at odd hours. Bethany's mother comes on Thursdays. Her sister comes whenever she feels like it. There are shoes by the door that belong to people who don't live there anymore. The kitchen counter holds three different kinds of cereal. A fruit bowl that is always either overflowing or empty, and a ceramic rooster that one of the kids brought back from a school trip to Mexico 12 years ago. Bethany works part-time at the grocery store three mornings a week, and she knows everyone in Clarenceville. She worries about the kids in that low-steady way that good moms do. She thinks they'll all figure it out eventually, and she mostly believes this. The puzzle lives on the dining room table, on a large piece of cardboard that Bethany cut from the box their new refrigerator came in two years ago. It's a good flat surface, and it moves easily when the table is needed for actual eating. She opens the travel trailer puzzle box at night while a pot of something good is simmering on the stove, and one of the teenagers is doing homework at the other end of the table with headphones on. By Wednesday, one of the pieces of the blue sky has been fitted in by a person or persons unknown. By Thursday, her husband has added three pieces of mountain while waiting for the kettle to boil. One of the returned children does a solid 20 minutes on the water section before pretending she wasn't doing it and going to watch TV. Bethany works on it in the evenings after the dishes are done, and the house is settling into its nighttime version of itself. She finds the pieces of the string of lights first and sets them aside in a small pile to save for later. The way Lois did, though, she doesn't know that and never will. When it's finished, she takes a picture and she posts it to the Clarenceville Puzzlers with a note that says, Great puzzle. Lots of fiddly bits. Very satisfying. A man named Robert claims it within the hour. Bethany is mildly surprised. She knows Robert slightly, the way everyone in Clarenceville knows everyone slightly. And he is not who she would have pictured doing puzzles. But then she thinks, handing the box to him outside of the grocery store on Monday. You never really know about people. Robert never used to be someone who liked puzzles. Six months ago, he was the kind of man who couldn't sit still, who ate lunch at his desk and took calls from clients on Sunday mornings. And then one day, his heart reminded him, without much warning, that it had opinions about all of this. The cardiologist was very frank with him. His wife, Carol, was more direct. They made it clear that something had to change. He tried walking. He sat in the garden once for 20 minutes and tried to meditate and nearly lost his mind. Then Carol put a puzzle on the kitchen table one night. And Robert sat down to move a few pieces around. And two hours later, he looked up and the kitchen was dark. He felt, for the first time in a long time, utterly calm. Now he uses his study for puzzles. There is a proper puzzle mat on the desk. Good lighting and a headlamp he ordered online. The headlamp helps him see the details. When Carol saw it, she said nothing, knowing enough to choose her battles. He listens to history podcasts while he works. The Second World War, mostly. The Eastern Front. The Pacific Theater. And occasionally he says something out loud to the dog. A retriever named Earl listens to Robert's comments with an expression of deep and genuine interest. After picking up the puzzle, Robert opens the box. The podcast picking up where it left off. Somewhere over the Solomon Islands. He tips the pieces out and begins. Border first. He finds the string of lights toward the end. On a quiet Sunday afternoon. When the house is still and Carol is reading in the next room. Robert fits the last small piece into place. And he sits back in his chair and looks at it. A little world by a lake. Mountains in the background. Everything still. That night, he is sleeping before 1030. Carol turns off his bedside light. And Clarenceville is slowing down now. The moon is up. And the stars are doing what stars do over small towns. Burning quietly and in great number. Indifferent and beautiful. The same stars that have looked down on every version of this town that has ever existed. In the apartment by the river. Lois is asleep. The cat has arranged herself at the foot of the bed. The river light moves on the ceiling in slow, pale patterns. Lois is breathing. It's deep and even. At Bethany's house. The last light went out 20 minutes ago. Dale is already asleep beside her. One arm thrown out in her direction. Bethany is dreaming about the puzzle. Just the colors of it. That warm gold light strung between the trees. The blue of the water. The whole bright, cheerful world of it drifting pleasantly through her sleeping mind. And in a very nice house, on a very quiet street, Robert is in bed by 1030. Which would have seemed impossible to him a year ago. Carol turns off his light a few minutes after he falls asleep. The puzzle waits on the desk in the dark. Just the string of lights left. All three of them found their way to sleep the same way. They each have a routine. A sequence of small and ordinary things done in an order that tells the body that the day is over. And sleep is next. Lois's radio and her puzzle pieces spreading under the lamp. Bethany's dishes done. The house softening around her. Robert's podcast. And his headlamp. And the quiet close of another evening. These routines are not elaborate or difficult. They are just consistent. The body learns quickly that certain things mean sleep is coming. And it begins to prepare. The light dimming in the evening. The screen set aside. The face washed. The teeth brushed. Rituals so familiar, they're nearly invisible. The door locked. The kitchen light off. These small acts of closure that tell the mind that the day is finished now. And there is something our three puzzlers share beyond their routines and their small corner of Clarenceville. They are connected to each other in a way that is so quiet and so ordinary it barely registers as connection at all. A box passed between strangers, a shared enthusiasm that most people would consider not worth mentioning. And yet, the travel trailer sat on Lois's kitchen island and on Bethany's cardboard and on Robert's proper puzzle mat. And something of each of those places is in it now. Without anyone planning it. That is how community works. Mostly. In the Facebook group with 40 members. In the swap outside the coffee shop on a Saturday morning. In the ceramic rooster on someone's counter. In the headlamp ordered online. In the cat who winds around someone's ankles every evening and has no idea she is part of a story. Everywhere, people are connected in these small and unannounced ways. Sharing what they love with strangers who become, in some modest and pleasant sense, neighbors. There is comfort in that. A warmth in knowing that these things that settle us, the things that make the evening feel like evening, and the night feel safe, and the morning something to move toward, we don't come to those things alone and now, here in the dark. Let yourself feel the weight of your own day releasing whatever your evening held. It brought you here to this bed, these covers, this particular darkness that belongs only to you. Feel the weight of your body settling deeper into this mattress. There's nothing pulling at you now. No decisions waiting. No unfinished thought that can't wait until morning. Just this, the warmth of your blankets, the dark behind your eyes, the slow and faithful rhythm of your own breathing. Let your thoughts go now, not pushed away. Just released, the way you'd set something down that you've been carrying for a long time. Just set them down. Your body is doing its slow and beautiful work. Your heart rate, chopping, your breathing, finding its own deep rhythm. Every system in you, easing into the rest it has been moving toward all day. Let the darkness be soft. Let the quiet be kind. Let your mind drift without direction toward nothing in particular. The way a light goes out in a window, on a still street, in a small town, where everyone has finally, peacefully, come home.