There and Back Again

From my earliest memories, books have always been a source of comfort and entertainment in my life. The love for reading was embedded in me, nearly written on my DNA just like the genes for my red hair and freckled skin. Many family trips were taken to various libraries and bookstores, searching for the next story to take home with us. Getting a new book began to feel as exciting as getting a new toy to play with, a feeling I still experience to this day when I step foot inside one of those sacred homes for stories lovingly written for me by authors I have never met.

As a millennial child, I grew up in a time of nearly constant change. I remember our first computer being set up in a small room adjacent to the den, a closet that would come to lovingly be known as “the computer room.” It makes me chuckle now to think of computers in that way as I type these words on my laptop with my smartphone sitting beside me. I could not have known back then that there would come a day when books would become less and less common, that schools would begin to make their textbooks electronic, that my family would get rid of the bookshelf full of old novels I had flipped through dozens of times, or that I myself would one day give away all my previously loved books in exchange for a Kindle app on my phone.

Stories always remained steadfast. I was lucky to have known a time when books were still revered and bedtime stories were read every night. As we were getting ready for bed, my brother and I would snuggle up under the blanket in my father’s bed, anxiously awaiting to hear the bedtime story he had chosen for us.

One of the stories I remember him reading to us was The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Each night, with heavy-lidded eyes, he would read a chapter from the epic tale of dwarfs, trolls, and mythical creatures, every adventure along the way more exciting than the last.

I remember being confused by the protagonist Bilbo Baggins, a simple little human-like creature with no particularly extraordinary qualities who, despite these seemingly damning qualities, is thrust into a life of excitement and intrigue and becomes a sort of hero. He was not beautiful, he was not charming or charismatic, nor was he a great warrior; he was just Bilbo.

On our last night of listening to The Hobbit, my dad closed the book and looked down at us.

“Who was your favorite character in the book?” he asked.

Without a pause, my brother said, “I liked Gandalf. He always seems to know what to do.”

I thought for a moment. In adventure stories, I always liked the warriors and the fighters, characters with physical strength and ability. I enjoyed when that strong person was a woman, but as The Hobbit was a bit of a sea of testosterone, I had to settle for a man.

“I liked Elrond. The elves seem to be the strongest people in Middle Earth, so that’s pretty cool.”

With a twinkle in his eye, my father smiled. He wasn’t surprised by our answers.

“My favorite is Bilbo,” he announced, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“I guess he was okay,” I admitted. For being a hobbit, he sure had come along as an adventurer by the end.

“You know what I love about hobbits?” He did not wait for our reply. “Hobbits aren’t all that special. They don’t have special powers like the elves or dwarfs. They enjoy staying at home and definitely don’t like going far from The Shire. But because of his uncomplicated personality, Bilbo was able to sort of stumble into being the hero, even taking the ring. Which, if you ever go on to read The Lord of the Rings books, is a pretty big deal.”

“Are we going to read those next?” my brother asked.

Chuckling my dad said, “No, those books are long and I don’t think you’re old enough yet.”

With a nudge, my brother and I went back to our own beds, drifting quickly to sleep.

It would be many years before I would revisit The Hobbit again. As an adult, I found I could relate with Bilbo Baggins in a way that I hadn’t as a child. He was no knight in armor as I so loved as a child. He was not a swordsman or a renowned archer. Rather, he was a normal, everyday person who just wanted to live his life the way he chose, but fate had stepped in and set him on a path that he never could have expected. And in the end, he had an amazing story to tell.

I am thankful that my childlike innocence had kept me from appreciating the significance of Bilbo’s story. It would take a great deal of trauma and heartbreak to put me in a place to understand that I was like the hobbit in that story in some way. Despite my protestations, I had experienced twists and turns that brought me far out of my comfort zone. I had seen conflict, death, and turmoil. I had made mistakes, some very costly and detrimental to those that I loved. Luckily, though, I had people in my life who were able to help me move forward and, eventually, find my way back home.

Bilbo could have laid down and given up, but he didn’t. He could have turned and run away. He didn’t do that either. Instead, he accepted the curve balls life threw at him and he came out stronger in the end. I choose to do the same.

Every good bedtime story needs a happy ending.

And they lived happily ever after. The end.