LATE BLOOMER: A SHORT STORY

At a luncheon he attended as a young man, the main course was Lobster Newburg.  It was expertly prepared from scratch, including the plunging of the unsuspecting live lobsters into large kettles of boiling water, which, courageously, he witnessed.  The sauce of butter, cream, cognac, and the rest, was created with such care as to be for a state dinner
. 
As it happened, he had never before eaten Lobster Newburg, and even though it was beautifully prepared, he could not get past the first forkful.

When the hostess asked him if there was something wrong with the Newburg, he had to confess that it was too rich for him.  His body would not accept it.   The lady smiled, sympathetically, admitting that lobster anything was an acquired taste. 
 
This was the same lady who had asked him on another occasion what he intended to be after he finished school, and he told her that, frankly, he didn’t know, but that it would certainly be something, more or less.  “Ah,” the lady said, “you are a late bloomer.”  He remembered this all the rest of his life.

The reason he remembered it was because it was true.  Now that he was sixty-four years old, he was able to look back on his life, as though from a mountain top, and observe how it had gone, see all the peaks and valleys.  When he was living those peaks and valleys he did not think they were leading anywhere.  He had accomplishments he was proud of and experience at all kinds of jobs, but none of it, he always knew, was really him.

Which was when, all of a sudden, he bloomed, or, more correctly, awakened.  It was like a rose suddenly discovering it was a rose.