It is rather funny to me that *I* would be writing anything about the Lord of the Rings.
After all, *I* was never the one with the posters on my bedroom wall, the watch parties, the books committed to memory, the one who wrote my name in Elvish on birthday cards. (I know there are people like this, because I am related to some of them.)
I feel rather unworthy, actually, to even be expressing my thoughts on something so timeless that I have only so recently become attached to. But the truth is, the Lord of the Rings makes me feel sentimental.
I’m sure there are lots of people who agree with that, but I’ll tell you why it’s so strange for me. I didn’t even watch the Fellowship until I was 12, one day when my older cousin was watching my sisters and I before my other cousin’s wedding. He was 20-something and needed to occupy his much younger girl cousins while the rest of the family scurried around taking care of wedding business….so he put on the Fellowship of the Ring, and I hated it.
I believe it was just the absence of an acquired taste. Growing up in a household of only sisters, we watched mostly Anne of Green Gables and knock-offs thereof. I had no taste for wizards and magic and gore, and at 12, that was all I got out of Tolkien’s world. Now I know it is so much more.
Last spring, when Anthony and I were dating and then engaged, we watched all three movies together while the world became green again. This was my third time watching the Fellowship, and first time with the second two. And I realized I had overlooked quite a few things. And we both realized we are very hobbit-ish.
(I.e., barefoot, enjoy being home, gardening, slightly grouchy when it comes to strangers, content to sit outside on a summer evening and simply watch chickens mosey around the yard….you see what I mean.)
One summer when I was working in Colorado, I came back to the staff housing quarters one night to find one of my friends sitting by herself on the couch watching the Fellowship of the Ring. I thought it was a weird choice, but joined her. “I just wanted something that felt like home,” she said.
And now I know. Because even though my fandom pales in comparison to those who grew up with these stories, there is something about them that feels like home. And at the same time, a longing for a home at which you haven’t yet arrived.
One of the things about these stories I so appreciate is how evil the evil is, and how good the good is, but how there’s also a lot of “mudiness”, shall we call it, nevertheless. “Good” characters get bad ideas and are enticed by evil, and sometimes they give in. The world of Middle Earth is so vast that it can contain beautiful mountains and places like the Shire, and horrible, ugly places like Isengard, and perfectly wonderful things happen at the same time as dreadful things.
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
And oh, dreadful things do happen. But somehow, in the end, it all ends up okay. But man, you have to wait for it. (And suffer through hours and hours of battle, still not my jam.)
I’m not trying to tie the story of Middle Earth, hobbits, elves, and orcs into something spiritual, because that’s already been done (quite well) by many other fans with more clout than I. All I’m saying is, I am not unaffected by the power of….well, the ring, I guess, but more like the power of J.R.R. Tolkien’s exquisite storytelling.
And at the moment, listening to the soundtrack of the Shire, I am feeling sentimental.
Of course, I’m alllllways sentimental about spring, but something about this year seems more intense.
Perhaps because I have a new home — a new role — not to mention a fairly-new husband!
Since we currently live in a basement apartment, I affectionately call it our hobbit hole, although the door, to my disappointment, is not round. It still does a good job as a door.
Ahhhh — it feels so refreshing to finally be one with the legions of homeschoolers who quote Tolkien at their dinner tables and say that I, at last, have a deep affection for the Lord of the Rings.
Threshing Floor Kitchen 