Reverse Cultre Shock and Hobbits

"Well, be off with you!" said Rosie, "If you've been looking after Mr. Frodo all this while, what d'ya want to leave him now for, as soon as things look dangerous?"

This was too much for Sam. It needed a weeks answer, or none.

Sam and Frodo are in relative safety at this point in their journey. Just a short time before they faced such great peril that even the ever-hopeful Sam dispaired and believed they would perish. But to the innocent Rosie Cotton, life could not be frought with more danger than the hobbits now faced. What could be worse than the party tree being torn down or a shortage of pipeweed? Sam would have to explain it to her and I'm sure it took much more than a week.

Ryan has been reading The Lord of the Rings out loud to me and it's taken a year and a half to finish, but the timing could not have been better. We knew what the hobbits felt as they began to understand that after all their adventurs, it was time to go home. The end of their journey had come and it was time to return to the familiarity of the Shire. Reading about the hobbits and their homecoming has helped us prepare for ours. Hopefully we won't find Oregon overtaken by Southrons and our homes usurped by someone named Pimple, but we do anticipate to be met with some of the same indifference and misunderstanding. The line from Rosie and Sam's response sums up what I expect coming home to be like. The people I encounter will be well intintioned but unable to comprehend what our family has experienced. But how could they unless they have traveled themselves? And even then, how do I explain what having a baby aborad is like? or Ryan describe his time coaching the Raptors? We can't. And that's why we have eachother. So we can share our memories and experiences together. But for everyone else, it will have to be a week, or nothing. Fortunately, much of our family visited, and often, and we have friends who have spent time abroad or traveled who can relate. And there are people who haven't had the same experiences we have but who care about us enough to listen to our stories and try to understand. And for eveyone else, well, it doesn't really matter. Because coming home is just another adventure in our journey.