Late Bloomers...

Michelle Obama, the soon-to-be First Lady of the United States turned 46 yesterday. That means she's a handful of days older than I am. I will be 46 in, well, a handful of days.. She is a lawyer, social advocate, working mother, and about to be co-pilot of the United States (sorry VP-elect Biden...). I am...um...a wife and working mother. I'm a late bloomer.

According to Wikepedia, a late bloomer is:

The term late bloomer has several distinct but related meanings:

• The term is used metaphorically to describe a child or adolescent who develops more slowly than others in their age group, but eventually catches up and in some cases overtakes their peers, or an adult whose talent or genius in a particular field only appears later in life than is normal - in some cases only in old age.

There is a link to other sections of the same article that deals with writers, specifically.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer#Writing Apparently, it's not uncommon for writers to be "late bloomers" which is comforting, because I'm having a "jeez, I'm almost 46 and what have I done" moment.

This little foray into introspection was triggered, not by Ms. Obama, but by a blast from my very distant past in the form of a fellow Wilder Penfield-ite who had found my website and contacted me. Gary e-mailed me this week. He's been a busy lad since we were classmates at Wilder Penfield in the 1970s. (since I just confessed my real age, there's no point in being coy about when I was in grade school, is there. ) He is now a math prof at the University of Ottawa, publishing papers on topics that baffle me...and cause me to break out in a sweat and hives at the mere thought of formulae...I remembered him immediately, have a vague recollection of a fairly significant crush on him and will now be making a trip to my mom's to look at my old school things that she still has, including class pictures. No, I will not be posting them, unless to prove my assertion that I have always been a geek, I just dress better now.

I am a late bloomer. I started Grade school in grade 1 rather than kindergarten because we moved. Friendships are built in Kindergarten, and my mom, who is very private and still has only a handful of friends she's had since her teens, was not very good at encouraging her painfully shy, introverted, bookloving, solitary and insecure daughter to make friends. I loved school because I loved to learn...but the social aspects of school were torment for me. I especially dreaded that quintessentially female rite of passage...the sleepover...because I was inevitably the kid who fell asleep early (confession time...I didn't fall asleep, I pretended to, and how does that adage go...eavesdroppers hear no good of them...) and was ridiculed and picked on by the other little girls. Little girls can be heartless and cruel. Little boys settle things with fisticuffs; girls use emotional and psychological warfare....calming breath, calming breath...I didn't know how to cope and spent a great deal of time wandering the schoolyard alone, unless I happened to be the girl with the skipping rope...and then I was popular until recess ended.

I started high school in Grade 1o rather than grade 9 because we moved...and I was smart. I attended a private Catholic girls' school in Dorval, QC for grade 7-8 (which is first and second year of high school in QC, because grade 7-11 is high school, and then there is 2 years of CEGEP before university) Queen of Angels Academy was an academic school, an entrance exam was required and the school only accepted 50 young ladies a year...competition for top marks was fierce. I maintained an average in the high 80s. We were exempted writing a final exam in any course that we had over 85% in, and I wrote one final exam (math) in 2 years...and I think even then my average for that subject was in the low 80s. To this day, I remember walking into that class for the final and hearing "Lisa is writing a FINAL?" like I had just posed nude, ran naked through the chapel AND gotten a tatoo. I only had 1 close friend at QAA. I remember walking the corridors at recess and lunch alone...a lot.

When we arrived in Kitchener, I was supposed to start Grade 9. One look at my academic transcript, and the principal bumped me into Grade 10, and Grade 11 for French. The only things that St. Marys and QAA had in common were uniforms, girls-only (then) and Catholic. They were diametrical opposites. It was okay to be smart at QAA-in fact, it was expected. At St. Mary's, the emphasis was more on sports and school involvement, or so it seemed to me. It was not okay to be smart. The all-boys school, St. Jeromes, was across the street, and the schools did silly things like allow the boys to buy flowers on Valentine's Day...and have them delivered to home room. In reality, maybe only 2-3 girls actually got flowers...and 28 of us felt like lowlife scum. (I never got a flower...)I remember my friend Clare got 2 flowers one year...I bet she doesn't remember...but I do.As the words to the song "AT 17" by Janis Ian (1975) so eloquently stated:
"To those of us who knew the pain of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball..."

I survived high school...barely. I was suicidal by the end of it. My only salvation was my twin discoveries of theatre and music. I hung out with the "theatre crowd", mainly boys. We were smart, we read (and understood) Thoreau for fun, listened to Springsteen, and didn't really fit in at either school, except with each other. A number of that group are still my close friends.

I found myself in university. I completed my undergrad in French and Political Science (double honours) (and a few years later, my MA in Poli Sci) and found out, especially in Poli Sci, that it was okay to be smart again. Many of my classmates have gone on to become professors, lawyers, successful businesspeople, Hollywood screenwriters etc Poli Sci is not a discipline for the faint of heart, because the future lawyers like to debate...everything. Being able to hold your own in an intellectual debate (although I still make it a point never to get into a battle of wits with an unarmed person...) was essential, and a quick wit and sarcastic take on the world stood me in good stead.

Since university, I have been a customs inspector, French supply teacher, grad student, teaching assistant, manager of a call centre, administrative assistant, collections officer (aka debt collector), customer service representative, legislation analyst, compliance consultant and a writer and editor. If I had been paying attention, I could have skipped straight to the "writer" part, because I started writing when I was about 10 years old, after reading "Anne of Green Gables" and deciding if she could write, so could I. I also remember saying in QAA days that I wanted to be a writer.

Late blooming applies to all aspects of my life. I didn't marry until I was 35, and became a parent at 42, at a time when some of my friends are becoming grandparents. Many of my friends are sending their offspring to university; I'm getting ready to register mine for junior kindergarten. I didn't really learn how to make friends until my 40s. I'm still working on that, and I'm only now accepting the person I am and my unique strengths and abilities.

I can own the label of late bloomer. I am not a lawyer, or first lady or university professor, although in the case of lawyer and professor, it is by choice rather than ability. I had the smarts; I didn't have the inclination. I am a fiercely loyal friend, a daughter, a daughter in law, a wife, a mother, a writer and an editor. I am a singer, a choir member, a crafter, a reader and a creator of books and poems. Maybe it's taken me this long to be comfortable with who I am and to build on it rather than tear it down. If late blooming means that I can use all of that "experience" to write great novels, (and I'm being pulled to write YA novels-all that unresolved teen angst) then so be it. I may bloom late...but bloom I will.