Frogging it

Now you see it.


Now you don't.


This had been the start of an adult version of a little baby sweater finished for Jonas, my new nephew, in September. Why I thought that a sweater that flatters an infant would flatter a grown woman is beyond me. It just seemed so cute...



...which I gather is an adjective that probably need no longer apply to my wardrobe. So I frogged it. Took it out and am beginning again with a pattern designed for, imagine it, a woman. I’m not thrilled by the dull green hue (it’s kinda like the Incredible Hulk suffering from a bit jaundice) but it keeps my hands busy during our evening Sopranos watching and that means I eat less of my cuticles.

But frogging my sweater isn’t the only thing I’ve been frogging. Last week I accidentally happened upon the MLA book exhibit at the – gasp – MLA convention. Actually, I got dragged there by a friend who promised me that I wouldn’t run into a soul. Ha. Within three minutes I was face-to-face with a colleague, and in another minute, with a nemesis who appears whenever I’m looking particularly downtrodden, like when I show up at the MLA convention book exhibit expecting to see no one and thus wearing jeans, my down coat that makes me look like a couch with legs, and my hair plastered against my forehead. Reeling from the encounter with said nemesis, who made sure to coolly remind me of her recent marriage, her tenure-track job at an R-1 institution, and the progress of her “manuscript,” I hurried off to peruse the displays. I headed over to a certain press because I wanted to see what they have coming out this spring, and because I wanted to daydream about how my manuscript might fit in someday with their catalog. But you know that feeling when your stomach just falls out, when you feel it drop on the floor and just lie there? Well, that’s what happened when I spotted a new book – still in proofs – bearing the name of a scholar whose article a decade ago first interested me in my topic. As luck would have it, she’s had a very productive retirement, and my gamble that that article would never become a book because she had to be close to retirement proved unwise. I opened to the table of contents: a couple chapters on Alcott, a few on Jane Addams, and heck, even one or two on M. Carey Thomas. This, by the way, damn near replicates my dissertation – in topic and in spirit. I started flipping through the introduction, felt the tears welling up behind my eyes, and just made a run for it.

All this to say: I may be frogging my dissertation. At the very least, it won’t be seeing the light of day at that press. But my disappointment about this discovery, is not, in fact, my point. My point is that I thought to myself: I could frog it. I could let it go. It’s going to be fine. In other words, I didn’t panic. I didn’t even really feel that anxious. And this is what’s new. Calm. Or at least relative calm. A new calm for a new year. A new blog. A new sense of proportion. I may have just 550 square feet and I may have to start again from scratch, but I’m here and I’m breathing. And I’m not in graduate school.

And don’t worry: I promise to avoid – at all costs – the suggestion that knitting is a metaphor for life. Gag me with a spoon.