A Father’s Work – May

Blotmath, 1384 SR
Hobbiton

Hamfast is 58, Hamson 19, Halfred 15, Daisy 12, May 8, Sam 4 and Marigold 11 months (or about 37, 12, 9 ½, 7 ½, 5, 2 ½ years, and 7 months in Man years)

Hard as it seems to believe, things are finally settling down to a sort of normalcy as we haven’t seen since the beginning of the year. Our lives got mixed up with the news of my daddy’s passing in Afteryule, and we’d gone up to Tighfield to stay with my brother Andy and his family to see my dad put to his final resting. Marigold were just a few weeks old and Bell still weak from the pregnancy, but she insisted on coming. We were up there ‘til the middle of Solmath, helping my mother get settled with my sister May and seeing to the selling of the house and what all as needed doing.

Bell seemed to improve actually while we were there, going off to her kin and showing off the children, looking more lively and beautiful than she had in over a year. But when we come home, she started a coughing again, and that’s when it all went down the hill as they say.

Bell’s absence is still missed every moment of the day, and Sammy still can be found a curled up with me in bed most mornings, but after four long months we’ve fallen into a pattern. Hamson gets up first and wakes his siblings, then goes outside to the woodshed to fill the wood boxes and chop more wood for the morrow if need be. Halfred gets up to be making everyone’s luncheons while Daisy sets to making first breakfast, and for most of us our only breakfast. Meantime, May’s a helping me with Sam and Marigold to get them ready for the day. Then I feed the bairn some goat milk as May gathers up a sack of things Goldie’ll be needing during the day and stowing them in the buggy. There’s still bickering at times and sometimes one or more of the children will be slow to getting up, but most days we’re out the door on time to head our different directions: the lasses and Sam to the Rumbles down the Hill a ways, Hamson and Halfred to whatever jobs they’ve managed to secure for themselves, and me to Bag End.

Not as this means I know what I’m a doing half the time. I doubt that day’ll ever come but I can fake it well enough most times. Not always. I still make a good many mistakes, like the other day I set to changing Goldie’s nappy, got distracted by somewhat, then forget to put a new one on her. Then there was the time two months ago when I promised to bake some pies for a harvest gathering, then got caught up late at Bag End and didn’t have time to be baking even one. I had to stop by the bakery first thing in the morn on my way to the Cotton’s to buy some.

This though is to be the biggest and foolest mistake of them all. May’s been complaining about feeling sickly for a couple of days, sore throat, runny nose, the usual sort of thing. There’s a cold going around, nothing serious, but I make a mention of it to Amelia all the same when I drop the lasses off at the Rumbles. Just me being there is enough for her to know as something were amiss, and she promises to keep watch over May and keep her inside and full of tea and chicken soup. When she come home at night, I make sure to give her more tea, full of all the usual medicaments as any healer would give a sick child. The healer. I should of called for Miss Camellia the moment May took sick, but I thought as I could handle it. I don’t even notice when May starts worsening, not even when her sneezing turns to coughing. Sammy certainly does; he’s a cuddled up next to her in the parlor tonight. He puts his ear to her chest to listen to the rumbling going on inside and he goes to bed troubled.

Funnily enough, he ain’t in bed with me later that night when Daisy come to wake me. May’s broken into a fever and drenched all the bed sheets. She’s having trouble breathing and can’t stop coughing so’s her eyes tear up, and she reckons she’s going to die. I dash out in the rain to fetch the healer, barely stopping to pull on a coat over my bedclothes. I run down the Hill as fast as my feet can carry me, berating myself the whole way for not paying more attention. I spend a good portion of the night sitting in the parlor, Daisy sleeping on my lap, waiting for Miss Camellia to come out and tell me something, anything, about what is going on with my daughter, hoping against hope that May will pull through. Bell I couldn’t help, but this never should of happened to May.

It’s a long week of the healer and her prentice coming and going at all hours. There are endless baths, cold compresses, tinctures, teas and what all else I don’t know. Amelia comes up to be with the children so as I can go to work, but I don’t get aught done and every day at noon, Mr. Bilbo comes out with a crock of soup, a pan of casserole and a loaf of bread to send me home. Not as we’re needing the food; the Goodloves and the Twofoots down the Row keep us up to our ears in meals, and Cousin Tom even manages to bring some stores over to us once he gets word of May’s sickness. He takes Marigold off with him, saying as Lily’s got more’n enough milk to be a feeding her and the twins. Offers to take the others too, but they refuse to budge and Sam all but kicks and screams when Tom bends down for him.

Sammy. I get home from my half days up the Hill and Sammy’s a sitting agin the door to his sisters’ room, crying to be let in, he’d be no bother to the healer, honest he wouldn’t. Amelia keeps him out hoping to spare him the sickness, but he ain’t eating or taking his naps and at night he keeps me up with his tossing. He’s worrit his sister’ll disappear if he ain’t there while she’s sick, disappear like his ma, gone never to return. I let him in and shrug to the healer, who nods as it’s all right, and he curls up on the bed next to May and just sleeps, holding her hand. After the second day of this, Miss Camellia makes Sam her special helper, and he’ll sit next to May and chatter away at her, never mind that she’s a sleeping more often than she’s awake, while the healer goes about boiling more cloths or mixing more herbs for her poultices and tonics.

Finally, after a week, May’s fever breaks and she wakes up for the first time in two days. We all breathe a sigh of relief and I actually manage to get some work done in the Bag End garden that day. The next week’s like a flurry. May steadily gets better every day, but she has setbacks and her cough still lingers. The hardest part is getting her to take her medicaments now as she’s awake.

“She likes honey,” I tell Miss Camellia, knowing as she adds honey to the medicinal tea.

After that, Miss Camellia mixes her herbs in a crock of honey and gives May a spoonful every few hours or so.* May really starts improving after that and by the end of another week, her cough’s gone, she has color in her cheeks and she’s a sitting up in bed asking when she’ll have leave to get up and play. Tom brings Marigold back and we’re all so happy to be back together again we cook up a meal to feed the whole Row and invite the Cottons, Mr. Bilbo, Miss Camellia and her prentice to join us.

Today’s the first day May’s been allowed out of bed the whole day since she took sick. She makes it down to Amelia’s after a few stops to catch her breath, and Amelia keeps her sitting most of the day, folding sheets and mending shirts. We’re all glad to be back to our routine. For the first time in three weeks, Mr. Bilbo sends me home empty-handed and when I get home, everyone’s doing what they ought to be doing. Hamson’s stoking the fire in the kitchen oven and lighting the lanterns and candles, Daisy and May are fixing supper, and Halfred’s in the parlor giving Marigold and Sam their nightly washing.

“Good evening, children,” I say as usual.

“Good evening, Gaffer,” they say in return. Marigold shrieks and claps to see me. And just like that, the uncertainty of the past month slips away and we’re back to normal, or as normal as we’re ever going to be.

An hour later, we’re sitting to supper and the children are all telling me about their days.

“Farmer Noakes’s cat had her a litter today,” Hamson says.

“Oh, I love kittens,” May says with a sideways glance at me. She’s always a trying to get me to give her a kitten.

“You wouldn’t love these ones,” Halfred pipes in. “They’re tiny as your thumb and all pink and wrinkly. They can’t even open their eyes or walk about or nothing. All’s they can do is lie there and drink their mother’s milk. And their mother is one mean cat all of sudden. She scratched at me for no reason.” He holds up his left hand as evidence and we all see the angry red scratches running over the back of his hand.

“Of course she’s being mean,” Daisy says with a roll of her eyes. “She’s a mama now, she’s got younglings to protect.”

“I don’t know. I don’t ever remember Ma scratching at anyone as tried to get near me,” Fred says back.

“Probably cause she was hoping as they’d keep you,” Hamson jokes and we all laugh.

“None of you were around yet,” I say, “but when she were pregnant with Hamson, she did give Mr. Otho a piece of her mind. He’d a come down the road from Bywater in his pony-trap, driving them ponies like he were racing to a fire. Near run over your ma. She weren’t concerned about herself so much, but she was worrit for the bairn inside her. Mr. Otho stopped to help her up and he apologized and all, but he didn’t get away afore your ma could tell him he ought to be slowing down if he knew what was good for him. He never did race that trap again after that, leastways, not down Bywater Road.”

“Ma did that?” Daisy asks and they all look at me with astonishment. Goldie spits out her peas and squishes them with her hand.

“Aye, she did that. She never took to anyone talking down about any of you either,” I continue. “Not that many do, but her and Mistress Lobelia knew best to just ignore each other when they saw the other in market.”

“She talked sauce to Lobelia too?” Halfred asks.

“She caught Lobelia about to discipline Daisy once, and your ma didn’t care much for Lobelia’s idea of discipline,” I say. “Your ma went right up to Lobelia, took that darned umbrella right out of her hands and threw it in the river. Said if Lobelia wanted it back so bad, she could jump in and get it. Then your ma looked right in her eyes and said, ‘Don’t you ever raise a hand to any of my children again, or it’ll be the last thing you do inside this Shire.’ Oh, Lobelia’d tried plenty after that to intimidate your ma, but she’d have none of it, and eventually Lobelia gave up and just took to pretending your ma wasn’t there, and your ma was glad to do the same.”

“I don’t remember none of that,” Daisy says.

“Oh, you couldn’t have been more than Sam’s age now,” I say. “Of course you’d not remember.”

“Does that mean I won’t remember Ma?” Sam asks, reminding me again he ain’t as slow as his name would suggest. He looks up at me with his brown eyes and simply waits. Meantime, the others are a looking at me, horrified at the thought. Hamson’s eyes travel to Marigold, who’s now licking the squashed peas off her hands; the bairn hardly even knew her ma to be starting with.

“We’ll make sure you’re remembering your ma,” I say. “You and Goldie both.”

“Dad?” May asks.

“Yes, love?”

“How come I got better and Ma didn’t?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, love, but I’m right glad you did. I couldn’t have borne to lose you, any of you. From here on out, any of you so much as sniffle, I want you dressing for the Fell Winter, understand me?”

“Yes Dad,” they promise and poke at their food.

“Dad?” Halfred asks after a few minutes of cold silence.

“What is it Fred?”

“Can you tell us about the Fell Winter, being as you were there and all?” he asks with a grin.

“Wha-?” I splutter and the others laugh. “Now you hear this, you mongrel, I ain’t that old and you know it.”

“Did they have candles when you were our age?” Daisy asks.

“How’d folk manage to get anywhere, what with having no wheels yet and all?” Hamson asks next.

“Can you tell us about our Wandering Days afore we settled in the Shire?” May asks and snickers, sending the others and myself into fits of laughter. Goldie laughs along with us and squishes more peas.

That night as I’m tucking the lasses into bed, May asks me again, “How come Ma didn’t get better?”

I sit next to her on the bed and look at her, then at Daisy. It’s a hard thing for a parent to admit he don’t know everything and can’t protect his children from the harshest facts of life. I wish as I could give them an answer as would make sense and give them some comfort, but all’s I can do is shrug and say, “She just didn’t.”

“Is it cause she didn’t love us enough?” Daisy asks.

“She loved you with every breath she took, including her last, and don’t you ever doubt that,” I say. “Folks just die. Young folk, old folk, healthy folk, sick folk. That’s just how it happens.”

“You’re not going to leave us, are you, Gaffer?” May asks.

“I don’t plan to, not for a very long time,” I say. “But if something ever does happen to me, you’ll all be taken care of. You’ll be going to your Aunt May’s in Tighfield, and your brothers will be prenticed to your Uncle Andy and your Uncle Bill, your ma’s brother. You’ll not be separated ‘til your grown and ready to marry and start your own families. That I do promise you.”

The lasses nod at this, then Daisy says, “Well, if you ever so much as sniffle, you better dress for the Fell Winter too, and no arguing about going for the healer.”

“Yes, Mother Daisy,” I agree and we shake hands to make it official-like. I finish tucking the lasses into bed and kiss them good-night. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“And we’ll all be here in the morning,” May says.

“That we will,” I say. I blow out the candles and close the door behind me. In the tunnel, I lean agin the door and thank the stars for correcting my mistake and giving me my Mayflower back. I’ll not be so careless again, that I promise also.

GF 6/15/08

* - My grandmother recently gave me some medicated honey for some chest congestion I was having. It worked and my congestion was gone a week later. I figured this would be a good way for the healers of the Shire to administer medicine to sick children, since they’ll only be able to taste the honey. And they have the Gaffer to thank for it. :)