Then Susan Boyle began to sing.
Now there is word of a record deal, the American press has found her and there are network cameras in her tiny Scottish village of Blackburn, a place where Susan Boyle was liked well enough, but not treasured, certainly.
At 47, with no job and no lover - she confessed she's never been kissed - Susan Boyle was at least translucent, if not invisible.
But her performance is so beautiful and her story such a feel-good moment that I am willing to guess than many of the millions of hits are from women like me, invisible women, who click on it again and again to see Susan Boyle blossom and to take some comfort from her triumph.
Much has been made since her success that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. And that this woman is beautiful on the inside. Everyone is astonished that such a beautiful voice could come with such plain packaging. People are saying that if she were a pretty young thing, she wouldn't have gotten all this attention. She might not have gotten a second look.
Kind of an irony, don't you think?
But if you are a woman of a certain age, you know what it is like not to get a second look. Now all of the invisible women have a patron saint in Susan Boyle, a woman who stepped from the shadows, holding a dream she'd buried long ago, and onto the world's stage.
