We are Tooks (too - ks)

Today the children and I went walking in the woods to see what birds we could find. It was a lovely walk near the Mississippi river. We saw tons of robins. They were all over a hillside and they were eating berries off a tree. In one tree we counted fourteen robins.

The kids were so excited.

So. On the way home, we were walking up a snowy, icy huge hill; and my son Elijah calls for my attention. I turn around and he is below me. He has a yellow, red and black winter coat on. He has a green "mad bomber" hat with brown rabbit fir on his head, with the flaps open and "flapping" in the wind. He is using a huge stick that has a kink at the top, like an unfinished shepherd's crook. His cheeks are rosy, and there is an excitement and aliveness all over his face.

He says to me, "Mom! I think we are 'Tooks'!"

"What?"

"Tooks! You know, what Bilbo and Frodo were! We look for adventures!"

I marveled at him and agreed with him. But the moment kept living with me through the day.

So.

I looked up "Took" in The Hobbit:

"As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit -- Bilbo Baggins, that is -- was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of The Hill. It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while a member of the Took-clan would go and have adventures. Thy discreetly disappered, and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtably richer."

When I read that, I turned to Elijah (who was right there, since I borrowed his hobbit book to look it up in) and completely agreed with him. "YES!, I said, "we are Tooks!" Later, we were talking about this again, and Elijah clarified that he meant that he and I were Tooks. That he does not see the others in the family as Tooks.

I am blown away by his insight into me. I realized that in my whole life, so far, I could not STAND walking on the path. I always HAD to go off the path because it was more interesting. I hate biking on paved bike trails, give me dirt with knobs and stones and some Adventure to it!!

I was struck by how I was named in community, (see H.Jane's blog here) the community of my own little, intimate family. I think it is an AMAZING blessing from God that He turns the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents (if we let Him!).

So. Today I was named. By my son. And he was named by God. And we found kinship. It really is a sweet and full-of-wonder thing to my soul.