ext_7742 ([identity profile] baranduin.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] b2mem2013-03-10 11:05 am

Meeting the Fox by [livejournal.com profile] baranduin

B2MeM Challenge: Wildcard (Athelas)
Format: Non-fiction
Genre: Memoir
Rating: Gen
Warnings: None
Characters: The fox
Pairings: None
Summary: Reading LOTR for the first time



“A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.
'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.”



I have a confession to make. I am one of those people who found the first couple of chapters rough going the first time. Oh, I don't now, those parts are among my favorite and most reread. But in the beginning I found it a little rough going.

"Here. Read this," my brother said to me and handed me a book with a very strange cover. Were those emus?

But, as he seemed serious plus he was my big brother, I did as he said and never looked back.

As with a lot of people, I first read LOTR during a difficult time in my life. I was 15. My mother was sick. She was to die a little over a year later. I read a large part of the book in hospital waiting rooms. It both took me away and comforted me and always has since that first reading.

So I got through the first couple of chapters and somewhere after Frodo left Bag End, it all became easy, perhaps when the fox stopped by in the Shire wood. It all became fascinating in fact, so engrossing that at one point I looked up from the book and asked my brother, "This is real, isn't it? There are hobbits, aren't there?"

He smiled but said nothing.

And all these decades later I'm still reading but I don't ask those questions any more. I don't need to. I know the answer.

[identity profile] lavendertook.livejournal.com 2013-03-12 03:05 am (UTC)(link)
I had a bit of a hard time with Hobbiton as a teen, and so the first chapters and the Scouring, but I was in denial about it. The gossipiness and pettiness of the other hobbits offended my teen sense of derring-do. Of course I loved our hobbits, and thought I loved all things hobbity then. I hadn't picked up on how Tolkien defines hobbits, and then gives us unhobbity, queer hobbits to identify with--tricksy he is.

I'm so sorry to hear about you losing your mom so young, but I'm glad you had LotR to bring you comfort, and that you share it with your brother.

Heeeee--emus. (-: