Chapter 3
Episode 3davids mine i stolen their love
I want to my kids to. Be
The snow fell in a soft, relentless curtain, blurring the edges of the house where I sat. My hands were still, the knitting needles resting in my lap like two thin, forgotten limbs. The scarf I was making for David—my youngest—had grown uneven, the stitches loose and frantic in some places, tight and choked in others. I couldn't remember the last time I had finished a row without having to pull it apart and start again.
The kids were upstairs. I could hear the muffled thud of footsteps, a door slamming, the high, thin wail of a disagreement that would dissolve into laughter or tears within minutes. It was the sound of a life I was supposed to be living, but I felt like a ghost in my own home, watching them from the other side of a pane of glass.
David had asked for a scarf the color of the ocean. Not the gray, churning winter sea outside our window, but the warm turquoise of a summer he’d only seen in pictures. He had a map of the world pinned above his bed, and he’d marked a tiny X on a beach in Greece, a place he’d decided we would go one day, when things were better. When I was better.
I wanted to give him that ocean. I wanted to knit him a world where the cold didn’t seep through the cracks in the floorboards, where the silence between my husband and me wasn’t a living thing that grew heavier with each passing night. But the yarn I had was a dull, slate blue, the color of the sky before a storm. It was all I could afford, all I could find in the bottom of the basket where I kept the remnants of other projects, other promises.
My fingers trembled as I picked up the needles again. The loop of yarn caught, and I pulled, the rhythm familiar, a muscle memory that had once brought me peace. Now it felt like a compulsion, a way to keep my hands busy while my mind unraveled.
I heard a creak on the stairs, light and hesitant. David appeared in the doorway, his hair a messy halo, his pajama shirt buttoned wrong. He was eight, still young enough to believe that a scarf could hold the warmth of a distant sea.
“Mom,” he said, his voice small. “Are you making it?”
I looked down at the lump of blue in my lap. It was shapeless, full of dropped stitches and tangled threads. It was nothing like the ocean he dreamed of.
“I’m trying,” I whispered, and the words felt like a confession.
He came closer, his bare feet silent on the cold floor. He didn’t look at the scarf. He looked at my face, his dark eyes too old, too knowing. He reached out and touched my hand, the one holding the needle.
“It’s okay if it’s not perfect,” he said. “I just want it to be from you.”
And in that moment, the glass pane between us cracked. Not shattered, but splintered, letting in a sliver of light. I pulled him onto my lap, the needles clattering to the floor, and I held him, my cheek against his hair, breathing in the scent of soap and sleep and childhood.
The ocean could wait. The map could wait. For now, I had this: a child who wanted my love, not a perfect scarf. And I would give it to him, stitch by broken stitch, until I found my way back to myself.