about late bloomers.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend who passed a landmark birthday a year ago. It just hit her. While we spoke she kept calling herself a “late bloomer.” Listening to my friend talk is when it hit me . . . I really don’t like that euphemism “late bloomer.”

In all of the years that I gardened, even when I needed two truckloads of bark mulch every summer, I never once heard anyone refer to a flower as a “late bloomer.” Flowers bloom when they’re meant to. Some show before the snow melts. Some come in early spring, some in mid-summer. Some are fall visitors. When I moved to a new home, what had been a spring flower became winter color.

Who’s a late bloomer? What are we late for? I’m not catching up to anything. I’m growing at exactly the rate I know how to, and I keep on growing. Everyone I know doing much the same thing. We’re tall, short, and uniquely beautiful. Each of us adds our own splash of changing color.

How boring if we were predictable! Flowers don’t bloom all at once or for each other. They bloom when they’re meant to. Some bloom once. Some are perennial.

We’re not late bloomers . . . but always blooming.

We Change, We Grow

Ever notice how other people’s kids grow up faster than we expect them to? Somehow we place them in time from the moment we last saw them and when we meet them again they’re bigger, older, and well, just different than we remember.

A colleague close to my heart been busy since the fall. So have I. . . . We haven’t really kept up with each other day to day. He popped up on Skype on day last week to make sure I am fine.

An interesting thing happened in that conversation. He assumed I was the same person operating from the place as the last time we spoken. But I’ve been through universe of realizations about life. I’ve made changes in who I am since that time.

I had to say, “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You’re thinking I’m who I used to be.”

I told him about the change in my thinking. He was surprised, but also pleased.

I keep thinking about that conversation. I never realized that I, too, had been expecting friends and colleagues to stay placed and unchanging in time.

What have I missed simply because I assumed no changes have occurred? Even that person in the mirror has changes I’ve not noticed.

I’m looking at everyone with new eyes.

And I take this thought to my personal social network.

If I’m looking, really paying attention, and I can’t tell when a people have grown, do I know them well enough to call them friends?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!