The Color Blue of the Hermit's Robe

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Some stories are planned. Some are outlined, wrestled with, revised, and rewritten until they finally surrender.

And then there are the rare stories that seem to arrive whole.

The Color Blue of the Hermit's Robe was one of those.

The story appeared out of nowhere and settled itself in front of me as if it had been waiting patiently all along.

It is not the sort of story I usually write. There are no grand adventures, no complicated mysteries, no elaborate plot twists. Instead, it tells a simple story about love, freedom, loyalty, and the difficult truth that sometimes love alone cannot make people understand one another.

At its heart are two men, a father and a son who deeply love the same woman: a wife and mother.

For years they share a wandering life together, traveling roads, living simply, and loving one another in their own quiet way.

Then something changes. The woman they love begins to fear the freedom that once belonged to all three of them. She wants certainty. Control. Permanence. The men do not fully understand what is happening to her, but neither do they condemn her.

In the end, they leave.

Not because they stop loving her.

Not because they are angry.

Not because they wish to be free of her.

They leave because they must keep possession of their own souls.

It is a story about a kind of faithfulness that is rarely written about. The men remain loyal to her all their lives. They carry her memory with them. Far away in the north they plant blue flowers, and every spring those flowers remind them of the woman they once loved and still love.

The story is simple on the surface, but deep beneath. It asks difficult questions about love and freedom.

Can we truly love someone without possessing them?

Can we remain faithful to another person while still remaining faithful to ourselves?

What surprised me most was not the story itself but the way it arrived.

I wrote the entire sixty-page novella in three days.

There was almost nothing to edit.

That has happened only a handful of times in my life.

It felt as though these two men simply walked in, sat down at my kitchen table, and told me what happened. My job was merely to listen and write it down before they got up and left again.

When the story was finished, they were gone.

The pages remained.

I think this story reflects something that often appears in my work: the tension between love and freedom.

Many of my characters are wanderers, hermits, misfits, and people who must choose between belonging and remaining true to themselves. This story seems to have arrived carrying that theme in its purest form.

What strikes me most is that it sounds less like a story I invented and more like one I received.

Sometimes that happens a character arrives fully formed, speaks clearly, and leaves very little work behind. Those stories often carry a different weight because they seem to come from somewhere deeper than conscious planning.

I felt like there was something quietly brave about the story's central idea.

Modern stories often focus on people fighting to stay together. This story asks a different question: What happens when love remains, but freedom must remain too?

That is a harder and less common truth.

As an eighty-year-old writer who has lived through love, disappointment, escape, healing, and long periods of solitude, I felt a great love and compassion for the two men. And her.

Not every separation is hatred.

Not every departure is betrayal.

Not every love story ends with people living under the same roof.

I love the beauty of flowers. The image of the blue flowers became a form of remembrance without possession – a way of saying: "I loved you. I still do. But I cannot live your life for you, nor you mine."

I think that echoes parts of my own writing voice: bittersweet, philosophical, a little melancholy, and rooted in the reality that people cannot always fix one another.

This little 60-page book carries the deepest of emotions with simple language.

The blue robe. The road. The flowers. The father and son.

They have the feeling of old truths that have simply found a new storyteller.

And sometimes that is the best kind of writing there is.

Heartfelt.

Have you ever read a story that felt less like invention and more like a gift? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Patsy Stanley is the author of over 50 books, including the Toy Car Series, the Desert Store Series, and the metaphysical Energy Within series. She writes from a small town with a view of the mountains.

-Patsy Stanley.