“Adventures Foretold”

“You’re thirty-three now.  You've come of age,” she said proudly with a smile as she straightened his collar.  “Folks tend to expect more of you the further into your thirties you go, my lad.”

He looked into her quiet grey-green eyes that seemed to change colour with her mood and nodded.  He knew well that she wasn’t finished speaking but merely pausing for effect.  She often did that.  She had this well-measured way of saying things that was so different from all of her other relations.  His mother’s side of the family seemed to speak quickly, moving from one topic to the next as if being carried off by the wind but she was different in that respect.  She always thought out what she was going to say.  She rarely spoke without purpose.

“Some folk may say that it’s time you made a match for yourself and gave me grandchildren.  They may say that you need to settle into a routine and make a contribution to the community,” she said this with an expression of distaste.  “I say that you are still too young yet to go on about all of that.  There will be time enough for it later.  Have some adventure.  Do something that you fancy.  The lasses of the Shire will be here when you’ve a mind to take up raising a family.”

“What sort of an adventure should I have?” he asked as she handed him his new dress coat.

“I’m certain that I haven’t a clue what sort of adventure,” she said kissing his cheek lightly.  “It just seems to me that you should have one.  There’s more than a bit of Tookish blood in you my dear one and though you give the impression of being a proper Baggins like your father, I do believe that something of my family will live on in you.  The Tooks are known to be more adventurous than most and so, sooner or later; I suspect that adventure will call you.  You can’t know how it will present itself but at some point in your life, Bilbo Baggins, an adventure will seek you out.  You must be ready.”

“It may at that,” Bilbo agreed a bit nervously.  He didn’t want to tell her that he hoped to find a quiet life for himself at Bag End.  Like most parents, she had such hopes for him.  He didn’t like the thought of disappointing her.  Still, for all of her claims to the contrary, at heart he really was a Baggins.  He would lead a quiet, well-ordered life.  He would be well thought of and respected.  If adventures did seek him out then he would walk the other way and ignore them.  There were plenty of Tooks in the Shire that would love to go adventuring.  Let adventure find them and leave him alone.

She interrupted his thoughts.  “Now, let us get you to the Great Hall and to your birthday party, dear one.  You have guests waiting.”

He took her arm and smiled over at her.  “Did you have an adventure?” he asked.

“My entire life has been an adventure, darling Bilbo,” Belladonna Took Baggins laughed.  “Every minute of it.  You are a part of that adventure and when I am gone you will go on adventuring for both of us.”  She squeezed his arm and in that moment he couldn’t imagine a time when she would not be with him for she seemed so very alive.  “Happy Birthday, Bilbo.  May your life never be dull,” she said softly.

  GW 09/21/2008