A Late Bloomer
“You’re a late bloomer.” My mother said this on my wedding day while I was dressing. It was a frantic morning, with the key getting stuck in the car’s lock, so we had to rush to the hardware store, and the staff helped us get to my dress in the hatchback. For a whole year after that day, the hardware store guys would greet me with, “It’s the bride! How can we help you today?” But I digress…
…my mother was looking at the ring of flowers in my hair, saying “late bloomer” to her 30-year-old daughter, who was finally getting married. I find the saying, “Late Bloomer,” as annoying as “ You’ve got so much potential.” Another one I heard often in my twenties in writing and art group,s.
Why do I hate the expression? It brings up feelings or inadequacy, like I’m caught in time, not quite there, not quite having arrived or arriving later than expected. Caught in expectations of a road that is mapped out before me.
And yet, I get it.
The expression may fit how I feel some days while painting or sketching at this later stage in my life.
It isn’t that I wasn’t creative, engaged, and busy with lots of adventures, work, relationships, and achievements in the past. I was learning and growing and doing and being like everyone else, but I wasn’t fully jumping into my own creativity. I’d latch on to others’ projects, “try”, dabble, take classes and workshops…all good, all interesting but something kept nettling me.
Some part of me has wanted to take flight. So many of us get the message to do a good job, focus, make a difference, help others, but at the same time, don’t be too outrageous, too self-focused/selfish, too over-the-top. I once had a boss who smugly smiled, saying, “Marti likes to go big.” I was trying to find a place in the office to hang my students’ large quilt we’d made. It was one of those compliments/insults that help keep us in our place, quiet us, take us down a notch. Not consciously mean, but coming from some sense of how everything should be formulated, even-handed, contained.It was the first red flag for me that at some point I’d be leaving teaching behind.
For me, it has come in stages…early retirement, moving to Nicaragua, the pandemic, cancer. Each phase has put a little more fire under my feet. A pension takes off the pressure I might have felt at twenty. And all those classes, experiences, adventures, and failures make up my current stage of taking off. Maybe that’s why I’m painting al ot of birds lately- that moment one lifts off is a moment of faith- our wings will work, the breeze will carry us, we’ll land ok at some point -wherever that is.
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Late Blooming?
At SIXTY YEARS OLD….Join me….
-First Solo Exhibition of artwork -reception December 5, 2025, Bruno’s Lucky 13, Valencia, Spain (up 5 weeks)
-Group Exhibition: in Ruzafa, Valencia, Spain, December 14-(1 day only)
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