Mood:
not sureTopic: "Foreclosure Follies" (7)
Tom Bombadil has been a good neighbor, for twenty-two years. It was not supposed to end this way. Tom is gone, and his house, once the most attractive bungalow in all the land, stands empty and forlorn. It is as if the house is lamenting the little girls Katie and Jennie who once lived there, and who played with the noble Lovey in the house next door. The house seems to be calling for someone new to mow the lawn, and to plant flowers along the sidewalk. The one thing that is for sure is that Tom Bombadil will view progress from afar.
Tom and his new wife, and her son from a prior marriage, moved to the house next door from Michigan, a land far beyond the temperant shores of the Shire. The marriage did not last long beyond a year, and Tom found himself all alone, a bachelor in a land of married couples and simple Hobbits. Several years passed and then the opportunity which breought him to the new land was no more, and Tom struggled with the advent of the twenty-first century. Things went from bad to worse for the conscientious young man, and debts began to build faster than resources could provide. He tried every mechanism. but the inevitable grew increasingly apparent, and then the house found its way to the courthouse steps, where Tom Bombadils' twenty-two years of investment disappeared.
Things were not supposed to happen this way. Tom was going to find happiness in the land next to the Shire, his fortunes would grow, and he would produce and multiply. Now however, more than one-fifth of a century has passed, and that which was new is now old, and that which was hopeful, now seems hopeless. Frodo stands before the empty house, and the approaching eve casts shadows where happy neighbors toasted new years and new presidencies. Easy it would be for the Hobbit to turn back to his own, and to forget that which Tom Bombadil has contributed to all whom he has ever known.
Tom Bombadil said to Frodo as he turned off the path to the Shire for the final time that Frodo should not feel sorry. Tom was initiating a new adventure, not so terribly far afield, where there are others without spouses, and opportunities to blaze new trails. He was, to Frodo's amazement and delight, glad that the ordeal was over, and that he could start again, to make his mark.
Frodo is happy for his friend. He will miss him. Perhaps the house will not be vacant long, and it will again fill with the voices of good hearts, and gentle people. Perhaps this is how things are supposed to end, and something else to begin.
