Bite the Ringlord (first posted 01/03/15)

I am an enormous Tolkien nerd. I became so at the ripe old age of 24. Here’s how it happened:

When I stopped being an animation student, I packed up my baby girl, swallowed my pride and moved back in with my family. They were wonderful about it, and the only problem they had with this was that I was a smoker. So, it was quitting time.

I don’t know if you’ve ever quit smoking. It hurts. You spend probably a week (it feels like a decade) thinking of nothing but cigarettes. Everything reminds you of cigarettes. Nothing can distract you from the thought of cigarettes. You cease to have personality traits and become this big, disgusting wad of sheer yearning for cigarettes. Also, your gut cramps up and you get the sweats and you cry a lot. When the craving starts to fade, you would be wise to put something else in its place, because otherwise you WILL revert to smoking, without question. (I know, I’ve done this several times. Glutton for punishment.)

My little sister was 16 at this point, and we decided to read Lord of the Rings aloud to each other over tea every day-- to occupy my mind, if nothing else. It made sense. After all, we were both fond of the movies, we both loved the book The Hobbit, and neither of us had ever made it farther than Gandalf’s looooong expository monologue in chapter two of The Fellowship; so we laughingly reasoned that, maybe, we could push through the Boring as a team.

This was brilliant. I was hooked. We had so much fun, drinking pot after pot of Irish Breakfast tea and trading the book back and forth when either of our voices got hoarse. We didn’t just survive the boring bits, we made them screamingly funny. I became someone who no longer cleared a room by smelling of tobacco, and instead cleared it by never shutting up about old J.R.R. and his wonderful, beautiful, splendid Middle Earth.

I still read the books every year to myself; some parts are still in Heather’s voice (“'Goldberry, Goldberry, Merry Yellow Berry-O?? Tolkien, you bastard!”) And those endless pots of tea are some of my favorite memories, and my sister’s willingness to help me heal from one addiction and tumble into a better one will always be in my long list of reasons to sing her praises at the gates.

Today is Tolkien’s birthday. AND Heather’s. Thank you both. Love you, Sister Mine.