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Evergreen Island Alone

| Flower Roberts

I made myself go to one of my favorite places today.

Going there used to be a reward for getting my chores done.

But today I went with my clothes still in the dryer and unfolded towels in a basket.

I had not swept the floors either.

Why the switch from going as a reward to being forced to go?

FEAR

That foe is still here.

So I went to Evergreen Island to prove that I could.

Alone

Unsure but determined

Who will make me go if I don’t?

I heard the fear voice whispering…

later, tomorrow, when you have time, when there is no pain, when your new stick gets here…

I heard that whispering all afternoon until I wanted to scream.

I grabbed my trek pole, camera and keys and marched myself to the car.

If I fall, I fall.

If it hurts, it hurts.

Fear has kept me from Evergreen Island for many months.

But I got there today!

Do not listen to that whispering voice.

Ignore that fear!

Listen to your heart.

FLOW

The Wolf Moon and the Spirit Orb

| Flower Roberts

Coyotes howled in the valley as I took these photos. A green spirit orb appeared.


This has happened before, the night of my daughter’s college graduation.
Believe what you wish.

FLOW

Wolf Moon and Green Spirit Orb

New Color for the New Year

| Flower Roberts

The pair of Storytellers’ Chairs have returned to the mountain fully restored and ready for more. I have been busy saving the stories as well. Legacy isn’t just about  things.

In the 1960’s the chairs were a plush green. They sat in my grandparents’ livingroom overlooking Hibriten Mountain. My maternal grandfather was the main storyteller.

Grannypaw in green

In the 1980’s the chairs were covered in a rosy velvet. They were in my parents’ home in Charlotte.

Daddy in rosy Hong Kong

Now, they are a lovely blue and sitting in the family room of my parents’ dreamhouse in the mountains of North Carolina.

New blue and the Zebra, too.

You may recognize the Zebra table nearby.
Having these important family heirlooms restored and placed here makes me feel like more time circles have been completed.


I have fond memories of times with the former owners of these chairs. I miss my precious relatives who are no longer living. I especially miss my mama, Dottie Ann/ Kiki and her younger brother Uncle Jim both of whom we lost in 2025.

Uncle Jim and Dottie Ann/ Kiki/ Mama

These family pieces being restored and ready for more years with our family brings me both peace and joy.

Many thanks to Blue Ridge Upholstery in Vilas, North Carolina for doing such an excellent job for us.

Good as new in blue

READY FOR 2026!


FLOW

Lights in the Darkness

| Flower Roberts

I appreciate holiday lights when the nights are looooooong.

Sleigh and horse

I love these because they are beside a lake which reflects the colors.

Stagecoach and horses


This resort’s lake has ducks and swans that call it home. I was glad to catch a duck in a photo.

Sleigh, reindeer and a duck

We saw both the real swans silently swimming this afternoon.

Blurry Swans


It is important to focus on lights in darkness. Just as it is crucial to look for hope during periods of sadness.

Soldier guarding the gate


Look for the light!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

FLOW in the glow

The Gift of Support

| Flower Roberts

Sometimes we must make decisions that our people do not understand. The need inside is so strong that the pulls from outside must be ignored.
That is where I have been for the past year and a half. I know I belong on the mountain, despite the challenges.

My family gifted me a battery port and solar panel to keep me connected even during power outages.


This is the best give of all. Maybe they cannot understand my decision, but they support my decision.

FLOW ready for snow

Kitchen Sinking Christmas Lighting

| Flower Roberts

One of our family traditions is to ride around town looking at Christmas lighting and decorations. We found a new favorite this year.

We visited the known hotspots along the main streets. There are two streets with rows of giant, blow-up Santas with an occasional snowman. There is a neighborhood of assorted lighted balls hanging from the trees. We even found a street of blow-up nutcrackers in town.

We visited the usual yard near us with dozens of the old-type of plastic lighted figures. (I have posted on this one before.) The choir on the bleachers was missing this year, but the snowmen, ceramic look-alike trees, toy soldiers, teddy bears, angels and a nativity scene were present in the presentation.

My husband and son found our new favorite while looking for something else. That is how life works!

This neighborhood was developed in the hundreds of acres of nature that surrounded our home for decades. I was glad to see the sparsely populated development in the previous woodlands getting into the holiday spirit.

Several of the yards were over-the-top lit up. There was even a lighted herd of deer where a real herd probably bedded down back in the day. They had a good assortment of Santas and snowmen and lights of all colors strung across roofs and trees. Just when we were getting to the deadend of the road, we spotted a bright glow on a hill.

Wowza! The over-the-top yards got topped by the most ecclectic grouping of lighted figures ever. These folks did not stop with tradition!

There was a gingerbread house with two dancing cookies.

The tree in the middle of the yard held colorful lighted ornaments. There were several angels. The gold one had flapping wings. The lighted mailbox’s door opened and closed. There were cute teddybears here and there.

The giant word JOY was behind the tree and Merry Christmas was down in front. Big lighted candles and snowflakes were scattered about. These images were fancy versions of the expected holiday decor.

This should have been more than enough cheer to spread, but these folks were not done yet. They had more to say this holiday.

Front and center of the glowing menagerie stood the three stand-outs of the ensemble. A golden Statue of Liberty glistening beautifully was noticed first.

Beside Lady Liberty was the silver Eiffel Tower, and beside it was a big, glowing Ferris Wheel.

WOWZA!

There is a story here. I hope I get to hear it before I leave town. I will let you know if/ when I do. It is going to be difficult to stay away until I know what inspired such a display.

Merry Christmas readers. I hope you each have an over-the-top holiday with events full of twinkling lights and dancing cookies and liberty.

FLOW

The Morphing Memoir

| Flower Roberts

What happens when the storyline falls apart and you are left looking at a completely different tale. In my digging through family artifacts to write a book that was supposed to be about paternalism and over-reaching parenting in past generations of my family history, I have discovered evidence to the contrary that was never mentioned.

The thread that joined the parts has been broken. The stories have shifted. How do I piece this history back together. No one is left alive to ask about any of this.

Does every family clean up their past and hold the next generation to higher standards? What do I do with this mess?

It is funny how one conversation or one letter can change everything.

Envelope with a surprise inside. No date stamp.

I found this last night as I purged another box of letters and papers. I may have seen this letter before in the box of letters from my Gran to my great, great aunt Ethel. I got up in the middle of the night to check for a date stamp on the envelope. There was not one.

Inside this envelope was a letter from my mom’s sister thanking her for sending the copy to be copied.

So my mom found this letter after my Gran died and thought enough of its contents to mail it to Canada to be copied and returned.

Box of letters that looks like a book on bottom shelf, far left, bottom of the stack.

This flagged that letter for me. Upon closer inspection, I realized a new part of the story was in there. How did I miss this? My cousin now has the originals. I am anxious to see if this letter is in the box and if it has my sticky note attached to it. This will confirm my craziness!

I must add a side story here. I found the box of letters from my Gran to Aunt Ethel in 2024 as we were cleaning out the house to sell it.  I took pictures of everything in the house in 2022. I did not know that the box of letters was actually a box, because it was disguised as a book. So to find photo of where it was all those years, I had to go through thousands of photos, mostly plants, to find a picture of the bookcase in my parents’ bedroom.

It has occurred to me that I am the only one who can carry this through.  I am the one with the photos and memories. I would never have had the time to do all this if bad things had not happened to put me in the right place as the world has shifted around my family.

I will continue until the universe stops me.

Stay tuned.

FLOW

Proud of the Beauty Queens

| Flower Roberts

I cried in my favorite Mexican restaurant tonight. I was trying to tell the woman working there how proud I am of Miss Mexico in the Miss Universe pageant for standing up for herself.

Her son came to translate. We both teared up and clasped hands. There we were, two mothers from two countries standing in solidarity against sexism. Will this ever end? Not if it is tolerated anytime, anywhere.

I am not a fan of beauty pageants. I did not grow up watching them. I have watched the clip of Miss Mexico rising from her seat as she was being scolded and called dumb. I witnessed the contempt of the organizer as he called for security to remove her.

I felt pride to see so many other contestants rise in support of their fellow contestant. All women should walk out on this type of disrespect.

Women do not get to choose when to stand up against it. It must be addressed every time it occurs. Zero tolerance is the only solution to such misbehavior.

The president of the strongest country in the world sees females as objects to be used and abused. The Gatsby-themed Halloween party is just the latest display of this attitude for the whole world to witness.

These Miss Universe contestants walked out wearing sashes bearing their country’s names. They chose to represent the women in their country and all women.

Pretty, sweet and kind are no protection from the bad behavior of the sexist beasts. Stand strong beauty queens. Little girls are watching.

Thank you Miss Mexico

Flower

New Wisdom from Old Memories

| Flower Roberts

I realize that wisdom must be waited for. Time needs to season events into lessons worth learning and a brain needs to be mature enough to receive the lessons.


I have always spent an inordinate amount of my time in watchful, thoughtful silence. I like to think of myself as invisible. I did this in a crowded room just this morning.

I have filed away mysteries and hoped that some day the missing pieces would show up. I did not expect eureka moments to dramatically present themselves at the proper time. I was just hoping to eventually have enough epiphanies so that some of those lingering questions could be laid to rest.

My job, as I have seen it, was just to pay attention. Most times I did not even bother to ask questions for clarification. I was too busy and confused. I also did not want to interrupt my observations. I figured the missing pieces would show up later.

This silence and lack of participation has come back around lately. I guess you could say now IS later, and I still feel almost as dumb and numb as the days of the confusing events.

When a new clue shows up decades later and causes neither a eureka nor an epiphany I feel a bit befuddled. Maybe the clue needs to sit a while to smolder?  OR Maybe my brain is not quite ready to fully grasp the lesson?

Now that I have circled the subject several times I am just going to come out with what I think about a saying that I keep coming across in my reading.

“You can’t go home again.”

(Book title. Thomas Wolfe sort of. I know. If I die and leave piles of notes, I hope someone will trash my ramblings instead of posthumously assuming I would want them released.)

This whole time I have thought of this title/saying as a sad way of saying your home changes and you go back and things are different and some things you really miss are not there anymore. Yes, this is true and a bit sad.

I spent eight months in 2023 and 2024 living in my childhood home and going through every itty bitty item to save or sell to pay my mama’s bills. I spent many hours sitting at our kitchen table in silence wondering what the fuck Thomas Wolfe (or his editor, or They) was/were talking about. Every damn thing was still here. I was sixty-three and hauling my Mama’s wedding dress down from the attic. Nothing ever left BUT me and my sister!

(If you scholars want to wander off with the fascism hypothesis here…go on without me. That’s NOT where I am going.)

That house was emptied and sold.  More losses … more deaths and more time. I am now spending time in another place I spent parts of my childhood in.  It’s been like haunting myself. So you could say I have gone home again and again. Same furniture, same photos, same piano.

BUT (it’s a big one)

I am not the same. I am the one who changed. I am in the same places, but no longer that person anymore.

YOU Can’t Go Home Again!

I must say, I am NOT sad about that at all. That makes so much sense. I guess I had to be sixty to season that enough to get it. So it really isn’t about HOME at all.

It’s about YOU.

This is an example of what I mean about wisdom. I was looking for one answer and something completely different showed up.

Eureka!

FLOW