The Snowman: Short Bedtime Story

This short sleep story is about a child making a snowman which comes to life. The child plays out in the snow, breaks the ice on a bird bath, before building a snowman, adding its mouth, buttons, eyes, nose and hair. The boy was pleased with how the snowman looked. He went to bed, and overnight the snowman woke up with consciousness.

Transcript

This story is about the snowman and so as you listen to this make sure that you can pay it your full attention and that you won't be disturbed and that you can just allow yourself to rest and close your eyes and allow yourself to begin to drift off asleep to the sound of my voice and as you listen to me I don't know if it'll be the sound of my voice that helps you fall asleep or whether it'll be the spaces between my words or whether you'll just drift off to sleep with the story as you listen along and there was a snowman a young boy had spent hours in his back garden initially rolling a small snowball around the garden and then after a little while the snowball was large enough for him to roll it around with two hands and his hands were freezing cold and the snow was sticking in clumps to his gloves and it was making his hands go numb but he was enjoying rolling that snowball around his garden and the snowball started to get larger and larger where he had to put a lot of effort into continuing to roll that snowball around the garden and for some parts of the garden where the snowball was rolling it was now picking up all the snow exposing the green flat grass underneath and it was cold and he could feel the cold on his cheeks as his face was slightly numb and that snowball was really solid as he rolled it into position ready to be the snowman's body and he hit it with his hands and he rubbed it with his gloves to try and smooth it down to try and give it some snowman shape he could hear the thud and the slap of his hands on that snow and then he got another small handful of snow and he started rolling that around in the garden and he rolled that around until it was large enough to require two hands to roll around then he pushed it around in different directions to make the snow as round on that snowman's face as he could and then once that snowball was about the size of a snowman's head he picked it up and placed it on top of the larger snowball he then while he held it with one hand reached down with the other hand and scraped snow up the lower snowball to the neck area and patted it around and then got some extra snow from the ground and started patting that around the neck patting it around smoothing it out connecting the large snowball to the smaller snowball and he could feel the snow from time to time as occasionally the snow fell and the snowflakes would tickle his nose and sometimes the snow would be heavy and other times just a little flutter and there was that sound of the footsteps on the snow and on the sloshy grass where the snow once was and that stillness in the air where everything just seemed so quiet and so peaceful this time of year when it's been snowing and the boy went and wandered around trying to find some small stones that he could use for eyes he had a little hunt around and as he hunted around he'd just feel tempted from time to time to put his hand down into untouched snow on top of the bin lid on windowsills and ledges and tabletops and over in the corner of his garden was an upturned bin lid that was full of water and usually that upturned bin lid full of water was a birdbath but because of it being so cold water had frozen solid and when he knocked that birdbath he could see the water sloshing slightly underneath the surface ice so he got his hand and carefully applied pressure to the top of the ice he could feel that smooth coldness under his fingertips as he stroked that ice and applied a bit more pressure and he could hear the cracking beginning as the ice was starting to give before it suddenly broke under the weight of his hand and his fingers got wet and soaked in the water and his hand was freezing cold but being a child out in the snow he didn't mind he enjoyed the snow and this season it wasn't something he experienced very often and he picked up some of the broken ice and just took a moment to enjoy handling that ice the feeling of the ice how incredibly smooth the ice is how fresh the ice smells and he found some small stones which he went and used his thumb to mark out holes for the eyes in the snowman and placed the stones within the holes then he used his finger to draw a mouth on the snowman and he then went looking to try and think what could he find for the nose and he hunted around and he didn't have any carrots which is what everyone seems to choose so he hunted around to see what he could find and after some hunting and some searching he found a broken piece of red brick and decided that that would make a slightly different nose so he used the red brick for nose and for the mouth he just got a little bit of mud and put a little bit of mud into the groove he'd made for the mouth and he thought it would be fun to get loads of pine needles load of pine leaves from the tree nearby and so he picked them off and he started placing them individually very carefully very patiently into the snowman's head creating a whole head of green hair and the snowman had its green hair it was a bit taller than the boy it had its red brick nose its dark stone eyes and its brown muddy mouth and the boy was pleased with his snowman he'd worked on his own in the garden making this snowman and when the boy went to bed that night the snowman woke up and the snowman gained some consciousness and this wasn't the first time that the snowman had gained consciousness the snowman may just be made out of water but when it takes the shape and the form of a being it develops the characteristics of a being and the snowman went to the birdbath and looked in the water to see what he looked like how had he been made this year he knew that in this form he would only exist for a few days before turning back into water and that wouldn't be the end of the snowman he would turn back into water he'd travel around the world in rivers streams lakes oceans he would travel through people through animals and eventually he would get built back into another snowman and the snowman went exploring and met up with other snow people and they enjoyed their freedom they enjoyed this relationship that they have with children where the children use their imaginations to build them up and turn them into living beings and for a few nights they get to meet up with each other they get to experience life and existence and they think to themselves about how if it wasn't for the children if no one was making snow people none of them would exist if none of them existed they've just be solid water on the ground or icicles or ice or water and rivers and streams and lakes and oceans but never being shaped into being a being never being given the opportunity for life the opportunity to bring pleasure and joy to others to play a role in the lives of others in quite the same way and in the morning the boy comes out of his house and he takes a photo of himself with his arm around his snowman and he's got this cheeky wide grin touching the tip of his forehead tip for his temple to the head of the snowman he doesn't mind that it makes his head slightly cold because he gets to have a selfie with a snowman and then as the days pass the snowman gradually melts and gets smaller and smaller and wider and wider across the ground and the water begins to evaporate up into the sky and the snowman continues his journey for another year knowing that in about a year's time he'll be back to be turned into a snowman again to bring joy to children and to experience the world as a being as the snowman melts so you can drift comfortably relax asleep