Blooming Out All Over

Yes, spring has sprung, at least in California, and things are blooming out all over. I am talking about the flowers, no doubt.

The other day I dropped by the high school that my son used to attend. In the drama teacher's office was a young woman who I had known several years ago when she was in high school. Last May, she graduated from college. She was a girl in high school, and four years later, she came back a young woman. Yes, I know this is what happens in life, kids grow up. But when you do not see these young people for four whole years, it is a dramatic change when you see them again. I've seen it time and again when these young people come back to visit Tim, their high school drama teacher, and I am always pleasantly surprised. The boys change too, of course, but it is the young women who surprise me the most.

Maybe its the tomboy-type girls who are attracted to Tim's stagecraft classes. Often their all consuming passion in high school is mastering power tools or working the light board. They come to crew calls faces scrubbed, dressed in jeans and tee shirts, hair pulled back, with non-existent hips. They come back to visit four years later wearing make-up, hair casually styled, hips rounding out their jeans. I am always stunned that the high school girls I knew come back to visit four years later as young women. Because in my mind, it was just yesterday that they were girls and today...voila!....young women.

But it is not only the physical change I see when they return. I also see something else, something that is in a way, even more dramatic. They return, no longer girls asking their high school teacher for advice, but young women confidently expressing ideas and opinions of their own. Of course, this is to be expected, as the college years are the last phase in becoming an adult, but, it surprises me still.

I notice something similar when I watch the winter Olympic games -- slim hipped young teens execute demanding jumps without much style, and come back four years later confident young women with full figures and incredible poise on the ice.

Yes, things are blooming out all over..