It’s the middle of the night.
There’s a storm outside that woke me up.
Wind in the trees.
Rain against the windows.
Ominous crashes outdoors.
The house is cold.
Do you ever wake up at o’dark thirty happy about it?
It’s usually not due to anything good.
Wind howling
Baby crying
You crying
Insomnia
Illness
Loneliness
The world is a cold, dark place at three a.m. when you can’t sleep.
Better under a down comforter with a drink.
What should I read?
Rose Smith: Nice girls don’t let men kiss them until after they’re engaged. Men don’t want the bloom rubbed off.
Esther Smith: Personally, I think I have too much bloom. Maybe that’s the trouble with me.
–Meet Me In St. Louis
As a modern woman, the idea of a girl coming into bloom is off-putting. Typically it’s all about sexual maturity combined with external innocence and it’s just a little squicky. The theory,of course, being that men come into their prime and stay there for decades while young women bloom young and fade quickly. It’s an old fashioned idea. I don’t hear the term used anymore, but I’m not sure we’ve stopped using the theory. Models are “too old” when they’re barely in their twenties, but Brad Pitt and George Clooney are still considered among the sexiest men alive well into their forties.
I had much more in common with Esther than with Rose as a teen. An excess of bloom and no one to rub it off. I definitely was not waiting for a permanent relationship to kiss someone. I would have been more than willing to have some bloom erased. Where were all the horny young men that parents are always warning girls about? They must have been on another street. I hear Deer Horn Road was a seething cauldron of teen lust, but not my corner of Glacier Drive!
Maybe the street name had an ardor-cooling effect?
I’ve probably told enough tales of my teen years for someone to deduce that I was not exactly untouched, but at the time it felt like there was never anyone around once I really started getting my bloom on.
Luckily, I eventually found plenty of young men who were more than willing to help me rub off my excess bloom. It’s a wonder I have any left at all. Uh, do I? It’s probably not possible for a fifty year old to have bloom left, except artificially. I am sure I have many other fine qualities without a fine blooming whatever.
In literature, of course, a fine blooming young girl is often a target. Tess Durbeyfield being the perfect example of young woman as victim. In other books, events might cause a lovely young woman to loose her bloom prematurely and damage her prospects in life, like gentle Anne Elliot in Persuasion. She gets her bloom back, and her man. Yep. In that order. Tess…well…a couple of men rub all of her bloom way the hell off and she ends up at the gallows. I’m summarizing a bit. You should probably read the books.
My bloom isn’t ever coming back, I’m reconciled to it.
I still like boys to try and rub it off though.
Is that so wrong?
Why don’t you like me without making me try?
–Mika/Grace Kelly.
One of the benefits of increasing age is a decrease in caring about what people think. When I was a teenager, or in my early twenties, I tended to want people to like me. I needed them to like me. I worried about it if people didn’t like me. As I get older, that need has decreased. I still prefer it when people like me, but these days if people don’t like me I don’t worry too much about it. Some people don’t. Some people won’t, and it doesn’t matter what I do they never will.
What I find interesting is that a lot of people think I’m intimidating. Mostly people at work. Me. Intimidating. It’s hilarious. In most ways, I’m about as intimidating as a half-melted marshmallow.
If I am completely frank, though, I do have a little bit of an issue with people who are willfully ignorant. You know the ones–the ones who are completely unwilling to learn. They aren’t necessarily stupid. They just refuse to learn, because they think that other people should be responsible for them at all times. They are the ones who ask questions, don’t bother listening to the answers, and then ask the same question again. And again. And yet again. They keep asking until I tell them to write down what I say because I won’t be saying it again. Since they don’t listen, they don’t hear that tone in my voice. The tone that indicates that I am very serious.
Those people might think I am intimidating when they try to ask me the same question again after I’ve told them to write it down. They will find that I meant exactly what I said. If I have suggested to someone that they write something down, and they call me again, what they will probably hear is:
“What did I tell you when you asked me this yesterday?”
And then I wait for them to tell me.
The really odd thing is that usually what they say is something like “you told me that I need to do xyz and that I should write it down.”
When I ask why they are calling me if they know what they are supposed to do, they don’t usually have an answer. They mumble something about thanking me for my help, and get the hell off my phone.
I’m not unkind about it. I don’t raise my voice. I am very civil. I like to think that I am helping them learn to behave like adults by refusing to enable their infantile dependency. Can you be gentle, yet still intimidating? Maybe you can.
Why can’t I like them without making them try?
Because it’s not good for them. Or me.