I've got seven minutes

[rabidsamfan]

to get my birthday gift out to all of you in thanks for making this a very good day. It's not quite right, but at least it's written!



Mathom

Not much had been saved. Sam sifted through the box of cookware and threadbare linens, smiling as he recognized his sisters’ stitchery on the edges of the tea towels.

Near the bottom of the box he found the things that the Gaffer had packed first.

A drawing of his mother. The herbal that Bilbo had given long ago. The carefully rolled family tree.

And at the very bottom, one thing more.

It wasn’t much – just a willow-whistle he had made for his tenth birthday, when he thought he was too old to give bunches of flowers like the babies did. It hadn’t worked well – it hadn’t worked at all really – but he’d given it to his father, because there wasn’t time to make another.

Sam turned the wood in his hands and remembered the way that the knife had slipped and the bunny-ears of the bandage his mother had tied on his finger. Hal and Ham had laughed at him, and his father had been gruff in his thanks, spending more words on the damaged hand than the gift. He’d never even tried to get a tune out of it.

The next year Sam had gone back to giving flowers.



Timeline (fiction only, most recent version, includes AU) first previous next last

Comments

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Oh... that's so vivid and clever! I can see him before my very eyes, I am deep inside his memories, and he is so real. And I learn more about Sam's relationship to his father than others have been able to explain with hundreds of words.

*bows*

*adds it to her growing list for the next rabidsamfan-collection.*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it well enough to add to the collection, LoL!

[shirebound]

Lovely mathom! What a wonderful image -- that of the Gaffer being too "gruff" to play music, but sentimental enough to save Sam's gift.

*happy sigh*

Re: Mathom

[eykar.livejournal.com]

The Gaffer may indeed have been too gruff to play music, and there is no record that he ever did, but since we find out from Sam's p.o.v. that the whistle didn't work anyway, I think the most interestingly ambiguous thing is that the Gaffer saved his son's well-meant failure. Especially considering the heaps of well-meant insults and predictions of disaster to which he seems to have treated Sam all his life by way of moral instruction, I wonder whether he held onto it at least partly as a warning: "The lad means well, but somebody had best knock some sense into him before his whole life ends up like this useless whistle."

Re: Mathom

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I think that the Gaffer is gentler than his words, actually. Much in the same way that Sam doesn't tie the knot very tight when he ties Gollum's ankle with the elven rope in the Emyn Muil.

Re: Mathom

[eykar.livejournal.com]

Exactly. He needs the reminder so he can keep up what he considers the level of gruffness necessary for being taken seriously. To me all his dire predictions sound like parental worry - and some parent of Sam's would have to be a worrier, or where would Sam get the talent?

Re: Mathom

[eykar.livejournal.com]

Another reason why the Gaffer might never have tried to play the flute Sam made: If he had shown an interest, Sam might have tried making a better one the next year, and injured himself again.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

The Gaffer's rather fascinating actually -- he's so crusty, but Sam obviously adores him...

[pippinswolf.livejournal.com]

Bittersweet and lovely. Thank you.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Yes, bittersweet. We never really understand our parents when we're children, do we? And sometimes not even when we've grown up.

I'm going through a lot of things my mom has saved through the years, and with her in the hospital it's a very different exercise than it is going through stuff while she's there to talk to about it.

[illyria-novia.livejournal.com]

I'm going through a lot of things my mom has saved through the years, and with her in the hospital it's a very different exercise than it is going through stuff while she's there to talk to about it.

But there is still a chance that you can talk with her about those, I hope. I know how it felt. I went through my father's things after he died and what I found told a lot, but never enough, about him. He used to teach children to read the Koran. After he stopped teaching because he had to move to another city, his students wrote him letters which he lovingly kept. It was bittersweet, making such discoveries.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm finding letters from my father too. And both grandmothers and various relations -- not to mention just about every piece of artwork any of my siblings and I ever did. Mom had all that stuff kept in a couple of garages after she didn't have a house any more, and now my sister is trying to deal with it all. That's the original reason I came out for a week. And I'm going back to Boston tomorrow night having actually dealt with very little of it...

[illyria-novia.livejournal.com]

You know, the thing with those letters is that while they spoke of simple, everyday things, they touched so deeply and could move people to tears better than some of the best stories ever written.

[illyria-novia.livejournal.com]

Sam turned the wood in his hands and remembered the way that the knife had slipped and the bunny-ears of the bandage his mother had tied on his finger. Hal and Ham had laughed at him, and his father had been gruff in his thanks, spending more words on the damaged hand than the gift. He’d never even tried to get a tune out of it.

Oh, how utterly sweet! You capture the Gamgees beautifully, realistically. I especially love that bit about children handing out flowers on their birthdays when they were too young to buy or make their own presents. I enjoy this mathom a lot! Thanks for writing it!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I forget the exact reference -- i think it's in one of Tolkien's letters that he says that the younger children give bouquets.

Glad you enjoyed it!