A Rose by Any Other Name
Writing from My Little Brother Ezra
4.22.25 | A Rose by Any Other Name
Writing from my little brother, Ezra: From August 2007 to my recent move in November 2017 I had a habit…every paycheck I would spend two dollars and have a packet of one hundred rose seeds shipped to me from China.
Now the breed is sterile and can't populate, and roughly ten out of every hundred would actually bloom, but I would sneak around North Carolina and plant the seeds in little pockets of fertilizer in random places like a demented Flower Power Johnny Appleseed.
Still, that's two thousand six hundred roses planted a year, twenty-six thousand over roughly a decade.
Again, only about one in ten would actually bloom, but it was always fun to see which ones would make it and how people responded.
My most successful was a trio of red and white roses that I planted in the ancient floodlights on the top of Winston Tower.
They were actually commented on in the Winston Salem Journal in 2015 when they were talking about 'Urban Eco-Systems.'
One of my proudest though was the one that I carefully planted in the hollow of a missing hood ornament on a nearly hundred-year-old moss and rust covered 341A Cadillac that sat on a well-mowed lawn.
I planted it as a lark mostly, I knew that the grass and grounds were mowed religiously every Friday, and I didn't want the flower to be ground under by the obsessive-compulsive gardener of doom.
For nearly a year nothing happened, I chalked it up as another dud and left it at that, accepting the loss for what it was and chuckling at the thought of what could have been as the groundskeeper tried to figure out where the flower could have come from.
Late July of last year I was driving past the area and was surprised to see a big to-do on the carefully trimmed grass, a wedding party of roughly twenty people were carefully arranged around the old car with the bride and groom sharing a kiss over the red and white petals of a proudly growing tea rose as the wedding photographer bounced around like a goat on Meth using the little flower as a center point to the wedding photos.
They actually chose the venue so they could have the picturesque car in their photos and had been delighted by the flower making an appearance.
So, if you are ever in North Carolina and you see a rose growing in an out-of-the-way area, take a picture, it might be one of mine.
“Ms Gibbs writes with such emotional honesty. She brings compassion to her young self and her siblings and a true search to find why the adults in her life are relentless in their chaos and cruelty. This really resonated with me and I think anyone who grew up in addiction, mental illness and abuse will recognize the struggle. It is so redemptive to see this child make it to adulthood and bring the family she fought so hard for with her. A tender and heartbreaking read that ends with beautiful redemption.”
— Sarah S.
“This book is so good. There were a few parts I had to stop reading because it made me cry. I heard about this book from a podcast. The book is better than I thought it would be. I loved the part about the mistletoe, I heard stories about people doing that. I just loved this book.”
— Ralph B.
—
At the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains sits the small farm towns of Rockwell, Sugar Loaf and Liledoun, North Carolina. A large family struggles to survive the chaotic nature of the family head: their mother, a terrifying blend of rage, disappointment, and religious command. Her husband follows sheepishly behind, a monster of his own kind.
And then there’s young Jesse: unwanted from conception but kept as a pawn for her mother’s bidding. Her life is a tale of growing up with no one to count on but herself.
A story of southern hills, a mother’s neglect, fireflies, kidnapping, birth, death, and the taste of sweet mulberries ripened by the sun. Jesse is a girl, hidden, who becomes a woman, discovered.
