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Gerontian

Most Hobbits delight in family trees carefully detailed in leather bound books inscribed with gold leaf. I do not. A fatherless Hobbit child needs not a Ring to appear invisible; and, whether or not he is silent has no bearing on the reality that he cannot be heard, at least not in public gatherings. The goodwives and crones that sheltered my mother believed in charity, but the possibility of a child born out of wedlock was unthinkable. Thus, my mother was passed from Goodbody to Boffin to Bracegirdle, all ignoring my presence with the same reserve as they would a pustule on the Mayor’s face if he invited one of them to dinner. My mother’s only revenge was to christen me with a name every Hobbit in the Shire would instantly associate with my paternal ancestry. The odd misspelling only proved it, after all.

The goodwives and crones would tell you, privately, of course, that the misfortune and fall of Eglantine Willows could be precisely dated back to her ill-fated, brief acquaintance with a certain Took. My dear mother never said. She only named me like a thunderclap. Certainly, we were never invited to Tookland, but as no one besides those charitable goodwives and crones invited us anywhere besides their spare rooms, this was not remarkable. The unacknowledged son of a Took was universally declared to be something improper and unnatural, and therefore, non-existent; yet, there I was.

An anonymous individual bequeathed a small thatched house on the edge of the Greenwood for my mother to have until her death. Eglantine Willow was not forgotten, only sent to live on the edge of the Wild, at the border of cultivated land, where she would remain unseen. Goodwives and crones rarely forget. The cottage was entailed to her sister’s line, reminding me of this reality of Hobbit life. I was a lonely child, friendless and invisible, until the Bagginses came into my life.

Old Bilbo discovered me one day inside the forest, playing a make believe game with a stray cat and a yellow mongrel that, unlike the Hobbits, found our cottage to their liking. He set about at once teaching me to read and write, not only in the Common Tongue, but in Elvish, both High Elvish and Sindarin, as well. Kind and wise, he knew I would need the skills of a wider world. The Shire had exiled me, already. Dear Bilbo ensured that I would have a craft that would serve me in other lands that cared not that I was a fatherless Took.

Indeed, I have traveled, from Lindon to Rivendell, Lake Town to Minas Tirith. I write and think and learn what I can of song and lore. It is my way to repay the kindness of an aging Hobbit, and his adopted son, Frodo, the only other Hobbit who ever smiled at me. I returned to the Shire well into my years. Mayor Gamgee remembered me, and took me in without a thought. He would blush to hear it, but he is more like Bilbo and Frodo than anyone else in the world. He will not let me speak of it very often, but I know his history, well. My travels took me far, but never to places as dark as he. It is another one of the miracles of the Lady’s Gift to Mayor Gamgee that allows me to take root in the Shire, at last, where I belong. I read. I listen and watch. And whenever anyone asks, I gladly tell tales and sing of the past and the present, invisible never more.