Dramatic Monologue: On Late Blooming

Chuck Sweetman

It’s a coming into one’s own, isn’t it? Blooming. . . 

You hear it said casually: when it came to math—

bless his heart—he was a real late bloomer. 

We’ll all get there, later if not sooner. But there’s 

another, more storied kind of late blooming:

a gradually-sudden metamorphosis! An elegant 

solution to the long-worked problem of how to be 

uniquely someone. This version’s not inevitable.

It’s not about short cuts or rookie-of-the-year 

awards either. I love how morning rituals and acts 

of devotion give shape to a passionate person. 

The vestments! The talismans! The quiet pageantry 

of sustaining a commitment in postmodern times. 

And look, I’m not the first to honor that spirit 

by reaching to myth, but who are late bloomers 

if not questers? Embracers of great tasks, riders

of storms, improvisors with misfortune. Believers

(at least suspenders of disbelief) in the spoils 

of victory, granted by a mostly-ordered cosmos 

in its own good time. . . In its own good time.

But what can you say? It doesn’t always work out. 

“Death by balloons.” That’s how one of my subjects 

described her nervous breakdown. After years 

busking in Boulder, Colorado, blowing balloons,

twisting entire packs of red dogs and green dragons

while scrapping to get by. “It felt like suffocating,” 

she said. “It was death by balloons.” Dream’s end.

Curse the gods—if only the household icons

of priority and necessity. Spite the begrudging gods 

altogether, rejecting the games they command 

for their own pleasure. Call out bias against people 

not created in their image. The disillusioned 

have many honest, even righteous, reasons to refuse. 

But! But for the undaunted, obsessed, misguided, mule-

headed, misunderstood, masochistic, romantic few—

what call to action remains possible on the day

when the sun will shine down. And there you are,

mid-quester stance in a courage-thirsty arena.

Sounds a lot like the famed American success story, 

doesn’t it? Albeit on acid or something. Trippier, 

in every sense. Late bloomers have journeyed. 

Spent time on remote islands. Finding love, building 

ships, eating lotus, seeing visions . . . visions of life 

and death. They’ve listened (particularly Americans 

have listened) to the language of fulfillment, beheld

its codewords as sparks flaring up from stoked 

campfires, flashing across polished helmet 

and sharpened sword, dazzling out into the night sky.