[Aratlithiel]

Child of the 7th Age and mark 12_30 invited me in the other day so I'm going to jump right in here...

It was 1975. I was 10 and a voracious reader. My mother often said that I went through books like other people went through potato chips - I would chew them up and swallow them and then go looking for more. It came to pass in the autumn of that year that I realized that I had read everything on my father's well-stocked bookshelf and was at a loss as to what to do with myself. I remembered seeing a stash of books in his closet once (I didn't know at the time why they were verboten and didn't really care - I needed something to read, you see) and so ransacked the box until I found 3 hard-cover books (carefully wrapped in plastic) written by the same author of The Hobbit! I was THRILLED! I loved The Hobbit. I had read it when I was 6 and never dreamed there were more. I immediately sat right there on the floor in front of the closet (books and shoes strewn about me everywhere) and began to read.

I had gotten almost two chapters into it when my father came home and just about flipped. I didn't know at the time, but these were 1954 first editions of the original George Allen & Unwin publications. (A relative in Ireland had gotten them for him and he treasured them - imagine when he saw my grubby little ten-year-old hands all over them!) He took the books away from me, wrapped them back up and returned them to their places, admonishing me never, NEVER to touch them again. Oh, it was TORTURE!! Never had I been told that I COULDN'T read something - especially something that was so alluring in just two small chapters!

So I was a good little girl and followed orders, right? Yeah, sure. I couldn't help myself. Everyday, there were two hours that my brothers and sisters had alone in the house between the time we got home from school and my parents got home from work. So everyday, I would plant myself in front of the closet, unwrap the books, read as much as I could in those two hours and then carefully re-wrap them and replace them before my dad got home. I cannot describe to you the torment I had going to bed every night, not being able get this story out of my mind and being so limited in what I could read everyday. And weekends when I couldn't read them at all were absolute hell! And it took me almost 4 weeks between The Choices of Master Samwise and The Tower of Cirith Ungol to finally find out what happened to Frodo! Ah, sweet relief.

Anyway, I finally reached the end of The Grey Havens thinking I had at least a few hundred pages left and...WHAT? APPENDICES?!?! What the dratted HELL is THIS? I want more Frodo! I read the appendices anyway because I simply could not stop at this point but I was hugely disappointed that the story had ended. I think I could have gone on forever sneaking Middle-earth for two hours a day under threat of punishment if only the story of Frodo went on!

And so it was that I read LotR from September through November of 1975 in secrecy and silent torment. But still, that wasn't enough. I began bugging my parents relentlessy for my own copy (never telling, of course that I had read my dad's) because I wanted to read it again...and again and again. I can't describe to you the disappointment I felt that Christmas when there was no new LotR under the tree for me.

That April, I received for my 11th birthday a beautiful 1965 collector's edition bound in red with gold lettering (Oh, joy! Just like the Red Book of Westmarch!) along with a companion green-bound The Hobbit. It was not until several years later that I confessed to my father that I had read his treasured 1st editions. He wasn't surprised.

A few years later, when I left for college I was unpacking my suitcase in my new dorm-room when I found some presents wrapped in white paper with daisies on it. There was a rather large, heavy one, a large light one and a very small one. I opened the small one first...it was a small metal button-pin, white with red lettering that said, "Frodo Lives." I knew immediately what the large heavy one was - yes my father had given me his cherished 1st editions. I cried. The large, light one was a print he had had made and framed of the map of Middle-earth. My new room-mate rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, God, you're one of THEM!" I never did get to like her.

I still have and treasure both of the sets he gave me as well as the map and pin and keep them in places of honor in my home. Like my father, I have forbidden my children from touching them, however, I do keep paperback editions handy for them and - joy of joys! - have had to replace them twice already because my children are just as enthralled by Middle-earth as I ever was. The poor paperbacks are put through the wringer before they're finally retired and replaced!

So, here I sit, a 37-yr-old mother of four who has been carrying on an unhealthy obsession with a fifty-year-old Hobbit for almost 30 years. I'm so very glad to see that I'm in very good company. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]