The Real Housewives of the Shire

Updated September 14, 2013.

I used to blog back in the day on MySpace (I tragically date myself here, wait, was that only 5 or 6 years ago?) and I once wrote a well-received entry on the dude I married.

 At the time, he was obsessed with an impending apocalypse that involved peak oil and his creation of a “life boat,”which is a small group of people with complimenting survival skills agreeing to ride out apocalyptic events together on an “island,” an undisclosed, remote wilderness location.

Of which I was informed I would not be privy to until I could prove my worth with some sort of skill beyond movie trivia. But I digress, and the dude I married has left that obsession behind after a few years, a few kids, and a move out into the country to our own “island.”

Now he has a new obsession. 

Although he has not stated it outright, I’m pretty certain he is trying to slowly turn himself into an actual Hobbit. I think any dude approaching age 40 starts to become more Hobbit-like in appearance anyway. There is the increasing roundness, increasing stockiness, and increasing hairiness. The dude I married is actually embracing the Hobbit lifestyle as only someone who reads The Lord of the Rings every year can truly master. 

He has always had a love of nature and a green thumb. First in an urban backyard, then in an even more urban community garden, and now sprawled over 5 rural acres. He has always read about organic and native gardening, restoration of native prairie and woodlands, and heirloom vegetables. Now that we live out in the country, where no one cares what your yard looks like, the plants are growing increasingly closer and taller. We are surrounded by a meadow of wild flowers covering a few acres with twisting mowed paths dotted with benches of reclaimed logs and branches from our own trees. I have no doubt he intends this forest and gardens to completely envelop the house at some point. He spends every evening walking and talking to his rows of sapling trees and tending to his gardens.

 In true Hobbit fashion, he shuns shoes during this evening ritual. He will go barefoot or at most wear sandals everywhere and anywhere he can get away with it. He has also always been a good cook. He loves a jolly dinner party with courses he has prepared and flowing wines or local brews. On lazy weekend days, I will actually hear him say the words, “hmmmm….I think it is time for second breakfast. Elevensies, anyone?” with all inflection of normalcy. 

Then, this past year, he took up knitting. It started as a desire to find an occupation during his train commutes doing something calming and constructive. It has become more than a hobby. He checks his knitting the way other people check their smartphones, any moment there is a pause in a conversation, any moment the kids are playing quietly, and anywhere we have to sit and wait for anything. He sneaks off to knit in quiet corners of the house. The boys look Hobbit and Elfish themselves in their multitude of brightly-colored pointed hats and Scandinavian sweaters. He recently discovered plans online to built actual small Hobbit houses. I discovered him just yesterday sketching plans for creating a Hobbiton in our back meadow.

He hates technology of any kind, finds it for the most part awkward and silly. He doesn't want your messages or likes. If he knows you, he wants to share food and talk to you. He doesn’t care about celebrities or sport heroes or cars.  He doesn’t bother himself much with schedules or money. He enjoys the company of plants and books more than most people. 

So I’m married to a Hobbit. 

And although I poke a slight bit of fun at him here and sometimes get exasperated at the way he floats through life, doesn’t everyone who reads The Lord of the Rings want to live for a time in the Shire? Toddle about gardens and wagon-worn paths. Drink large frothy drinks and sing merry songs. Feel the soft dirt and tickling green grass under your feet. Not bother yourself with what is going on out there in the larger world.

 I do. I envy the dude I married for escaping into that world so easily while I find myself pulled back by to-do lists and worry. I suppose I am lucky to get even small escapes into the Shire. Here on our own little "lifeboat" he has created from a crazy, busy, loud world where Hobbits don't really belong.

“Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people….for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth….They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skillful with tools. ….though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements. They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to meet come blundering by; and this art they have developed until to Men it may seem magical. But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that heredity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races. “

 From the Prologue (Concerning Hobbits) of J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, 1954