At that exact moment, Emerson Cod was 9 years 42 days 23 minutes and 13 seconds old. He was standing in the dark in his attic, trying to shut out the sounds of his parents yelling downstairs. The pillow he had wrapped around his head, embroidered with the saying "What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger", was doing little in the way of a sound muffler. It was unusually loud down there this night. Under normal circumstances, his parents' incessant arguments could be ignored by playing his Boston records (which his father had loudly declared were only listened to by sissies) and looking once again through his pop-up books (which his father said were for babies), but not this time. It was all too much. He didn't know what it was about this time. Maybe it was money or politics or, their favorite subject as far as he could tell, himself. But it didn't really matter. The volume of their disagreement had reached epic proportions, even going so far as to rattle the picture frames on the wall. (Maybe not really, but in Emerson's child-strength imagination, this was what was happening).
Emerson turned in place, looking for something, anything, that might distract him, take him away, while his parents verbally assaulted each other. Unfortunately, all he could see was some boxes of text books, an old mirror, and his grandmother's possessions. This last sight made poor Emerson, already tormented by the barrage of nastiness floating up the stairs, as his grandmother had passed on not quite two years before. He walked slowly towards the pile, not really knowing what was in there, but curious, as nine year old boys are wont to be. He found more books, some sweaters his grandmother had lovingly knitted and embroidered with little flowers and a pair of very disturbing false teeth. He was nearing the bottom of the pile and was starting to despair. It seemed that there would be nothing here, nothing at all, to take his mind off of everything. In frustration, he grabbed up an armful of the things in front of him and hurled them across the room. His breathing escalated, coming hard and fast, and then the tears started. He brusquely wiped them away, admonishing himself for such an 'unmanly display' as his father would always put it.
Collapsing in a heap, he covered his head with his arms. There was nothing here. Nothing at all. "No! " he yelled at himself; he would not give in this easily. If his parents' constant fighting and ignoring of him had taught him nothing else, it was that he was strong and could survive. He stood up again and continued the turning in place he had started before, what felt like years ago.
In his desperate grasping to find a distraction in the dusty attic, his eyes landed on his dearly departed grandmother's sewing basket, which had been hiding below the pile he had conveniently thrown. Something in it seemed to shine from underneath a tangle of thread, cloth, zippers and various other crafty accoutrements: two silver knitting needles were poking their way out of the morass. He cocked his head slightly to the left, narrowed his eyes just a bit, and peered harder at what looked like it might be his saving grace.
The year before his grandmother had died, she had attempted to show little Emerson, then only six, how to knit. At the time his father had refused to let him learn, claiming that only girls were supposed to knit. But Emerson had still covertly watched her at work, fascinated by how quickly she created soft, woolly clothing of seemingly thin air. Now it seemed like the only thing that might keep him sane.
Emerson pulled one needle then the other carefully out of the rat's nest of a basket. He turned them over, studying them: the sharp points, the way the meager overhead light glinted off of the curved edges, the feel of them, all round and easily manipulated. Looking over the yarns available to him, young Emerson picked a particolored skein; it faded from black to grey to not-quite-white and back again, perfectly matching the ups and downs that was his life in this house.
Gingerly, Emerson maneuvered the yarn and needles into what he vaguely recalled as their correct positions. It took him a few tries to cast on correctly and quite a few more to get the stitches to come out right, but once he had, he fell into a gentle, steady rhythm.
As his fingers moved faster and more deftly, each alternating row of perfect knit and perfect perl was another of Emerson's worries and frustrations slowly ebbing away. As every stitch came into being, the voices of his parents lowered a single decibel until they were something beyond silent, something more like nonexistent. As the house quieted around him, he became lost in a tranquil place, a place that only contained the clicking of knitting needles. Emerson had never in his short life quite known this kind of peace. By now the scarf had grown to the size of a large anaconda and continued to grow. It grew and expanded and went on and on. As it got bigger, he wrapped it around himself. Starting at his feet, around his ankles, then about his legs and the chair he was sitting in, until it was up around his armpits and arm movement was becoming limited. At this point, he came back to himself. With a slight shake, he opened his eyes.
The noise had stopped. Carefully extracting himself from his length of knitting, he took a quick peek out the attic door. This brief glimpse showed him that the house was dark. His parents had settled (or not) their problems for the night and had gone to bed. He returned to his chair and finished the row. As he gently folded his beautiful creation, he thought, "Now all it needs is tassels."