Late Bloomer

What’s A Late Bloomer?

It’s simple—a Late Bloomer is someone who discovers his or her strengths later than expected.  I’m convinced that George Elliot was speaking to Late Bloomers when she said, “it’s never too late to be what you might have been.”  I love that idea, especially since I’ve discovered there are all kinds of Late Bloomers. Who knew?  I only found out because every time I mention the book title someone says, “That’s me!  I’m a Late Bloomer too!”

 So people say, “I’m a LATE BLOOMER too!” Can you talk about that?  

Apparently, everyone is a Late Bloomer in some way.  It really is a revolution. One of my favorite stories is about a guy who worked in Hollywood throughout his twenties.  An assistant on a TV show, he felt his life was going nowhere.  Then one day he ordered the wrong lunch for the show’s star, who was furious.  When the assistant found the tuna sandwich stuffed into his coffee mug he quit on the spot.  He enrolled in law school and became a civil rights lawyer.  I love that story because it manages to be both inspiring and dishy.  Another woman had been a stay at home mother in her thirties.  She had always wanted to be an interior decorator, but worried she was too late to start a new career.  Now she owns her own company.

When I wrote the book I had no idea how many people would identify themselves as Late Bloomers—I thought it was just me.   I met a woman at a party who said, “You wrote a book about Late Bloomers?  I decided to have a child at forty-five and I got pregnant the first try!”  Then there was a seventeen year old boy who told me he didn’t talk until he was three and now he’s going to Yale. Another man said that in high school, “I was the short, chubby kid who took forever to go through puberty.  I didn’t get hair on my face until last week,” he laughed.  “And I didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty.”

  I love hearing people’s Late Bloomer stories.  It’s fantastic. They’re eager to share their stories and say, as I did, “Don’t get discouraged!  There’s hope!” 

 So Late Bloomers can be any age?

 Oh, definitely.  It’s not only the ninety-five year old woman who graduated from high school—although she’s a great example.  I recently met a twenty-two year old woman who said she wanted to be a writer, but was worried she had “started too late.”  And I said, “Too late? I should be carrying you in a Baby Bjorn.”  But then I remembered feeling the same way when I graduated college, because everyone either had jobs lined up or knew exactly what they wanted to do. And I wished so much someone had told me that everyone doesn’t grow up or figure things out at the same pace.  Some people bloom early, others late.  

 Why did you call your memoir THE LATE BLOOMER’S REVOLUTION?

 I’m embarrassed to admit this now, but my original working title was “The Blows.”  Fun, right? It sounds like the kind of book that could only be read with your head actually in the oven.  But I was feeling so hopeless: my mother was gone, my boyfriend had dumped me, I’d been fired, then I got a rash on my face that made me look as if I had fallen asleep on a George Foreman grill.  I just thought, “Where is the law of averages, here? Doesn’t something good have to happen at some point?” I felt like nothing was working out for me and I wondered if it ever would.

I started telling myself that I was a Late Bloomer just to calm myself down, but the idea gave me such hope that it became my mantra: “Everything will be alright,” I told myself.  “I’m a Late Bloomer.  I’m just a late Bloomer.”  Miraculously, the more I said it, the more I believed it… and then it actually became true.   

As for the revolution part of the title, I just can’t emphasize enough how little faith I had in myself for the first thirty-plus years of my life. I saw myself as the emotional equivalent of a cheap piñata, one hard blow and that would be it.  I desperately wanted to change and grow up, but I thought, “I’m thirty-five. If it hasn’t happened by now?  What’s the likelihood?” Teaching myself to ride a bicycle and tackle wheel revolutions was my turning point, the event that convinced me that I could one day see myself as strong and scrappy.  “If it’s not too late to learn to ride a bicycle, maybe it’s not too late to start growing up.”

 Why did you decide to write this book?

 I didn’t set out to write THE LATE BLOOMER’S REVOLUTION. I actually started writing a book about my mother’s illness and death. I wrote hundreds of very tender pages, most of which, while deeply felt, were deeply terribly written.  But I kept at it, thinking, “Okay, fine. I’ll just keep writing this book and eventually I’ll finish it when I get married and have kids.”  I imagined myself with adorable, moppy-haired kids scampering around my loft, my sexy, English sculptor husband gingerly opening the door to my office saying, “Darling, you’ve been writing for hours. Let me get you a mug of tea.”  But when marriage, kids, and the life I expected never happened, that became the book. I scrapped those hundreds of tender pages and started from scratch.  Come to think of it, the LATE BLOOMER’S REVOLUTION is actually a Late Bloomer itself.

 Who are some of your favorite Late Bloomers?

 For so long, when I was in the depths of my own career crisis, the only Late Bloomer I could think of was Colonel Sanders.  Honestly, I remember sitting on my bed, completely depressed that I’d lost my TV job and I would soothe myself thinking, “The Colonel found his fried chicken empire in his sixties. I still have time.”

 David Sedaris was still cleaning houses well into his thirties and published his first book a few years shy of forty.  The Marquis De Sade was fifty-one when his first book was published, which is good news as it’s never too late to be jailed for indecency.  Lucille Ball was almost forty when I LOVE LUCY debuted.  Then there’s Grandma Moses, who didn’t start painting until she was in her seventies. 

 What Late Blooming achievement are you most proud of?

 Teaching myself to ride a bicycle at thirty-five.  I’m as proud of being able to ride a bicycle as I am of being willing to look like a complete and total idiot day after day.

 Did any achievements come early?

 In fourth grade I won a ‘Sonny and Cher” look-alike contest. Particularly moving was my rendition of “Half-Breed.” Because we had no black wigs in the house, I wore my mother’s waist-length salt and pepper braid, which clashed with my short brown hair, and ultimately slipped off during song, making it look from afar as if a squirrel were resting at my feet.  

 How long have you been at work on this book?

 As my book became my “baby” in recent years, I’ve tallied up its gestation period as forty-eight months (four years), which as I’m sure you know is TWICE the gestation period of the average African Elephant.  So basically, in the time it took me to write my book, I could have given birth to at least two Elephants.

 Did the book involve any special research?

 Remembering painful memories like “how could I have walked around with that hideous long on one side, short on the other haircut in the eighties?”   Then there was the always fun exercise of reliving every relationship I’d ever had, long and short, happy and painful.  But actually that was good because in some cases I had been torturing myself  thinking, “Was I right to let him go?” And  I was so relieved that the answer was, “Hell , yes!”

 Many people have commented on how much they like the book’s ending.  How did you come up with it?

 Originally the book had a very different ending.  It was, I thought, the perfectly imperfect happily-ever-after: I was engaged to my fiancée, William, acknowledging our problems, while planning our wedding and vowing to work things out no matter what.

But then William and I broke up.  I was coping okay with that, but pretty worried about what it would mean for the book.  A friend of mine even said, “Wow, now that there’s no happy ending, I hope they still publish your book.”  I was panicked when I told my editor the news, worried that she might agree.  Instead, she told me, “I spoke to everyone at Hyperion about your break up…”

“You spoke to everyone at the publishing house about my break up?” I gulped.  “My cousins don’t know about it yet.”

“And you need to rewrite the ending.”  She told me that I had five weeks and that I couldn’t have an extension because my publishing date was locked in.

“But we just broke up a week ago,” I pleaded.  “I don’t have any perspective yet. What could I possibly say?”

She was very reassuring: “You know, Amy, this might just be the best thing to happen to your book.  I was always disappointed that the gift at the end of your story was finding the man.  This is bigger than that.” Adding, “You’ll find something. I have a lot of faith in you.”

That’s when I began waiting for my nervous breakdown.  I waited and waited to fall apart as if I were waiting for a package to arrive. And when that didn’t happen, I began writing about my delight and utter, complete shock at not falling apart.  That became the new and –I think—much better end to the book.