This is just to say… by Himring

This is just to say…

This is a defence of fan fiction, even if it is poetically framed, so if that needs a warning, consider yourself warned!

Read This is just to say…

Dear John Ronald,

 

Thank you very much for the yarn you sent! Such beautiful colours! Forest green, sea blue, fiery red, and the marvellous gold and silver of mallorns! Wonderful threads of mithril and silima!

For a while, I just stacked all the balls of yarn up and admired them, like a bowl of fruit or a pile of jewels. And that was good, too.

But I am a weaver, too, in a small way, and my fingers began to itch. And so, I began weaving them into a blanket. And then I discovered that there was yarn left, and I made a pillow case to go with the blanket. And then I discovered that there seemed to be more yarn left over than I had had to begin with, and so I went on weaving, making scarves and mats and throws, and giving them away to people who I hoped might like them or find them useful.

And there were those who told me that the colours had pleased their eye in an idle moment. That warmed my heart. And there were those who told me they had wrapped themselves in my blanket against the cold in the middle of the night. That meant so much to me!

And there were those who shook their heads and frowned and said I was misusing my skill, because the yarns I wove where not mine and I should have spun my own. Some said I was wasting my time; others even seemed to think I was doing something shameful.

But I did not unpick your own tapestries to make any of these things, John Ronald. They are still there, for all to see! Nothing was destroyed or damaged in my making and I have not taken anything away from others. If there is one thing that I have learned in this, it is that the more we weave, the more there is to weave.

And maybe another day I will walk out into the pastures and start shearing the sheep myself and learn all that craft, too, from the bottom up. And that will be good, too. But it is not this day.

I do not know whether you would want any of your yarn back, once I began meddling with it. Possibly none of it!

But it soothed my mind to weave your yarn, I learned much in the doing of it, and your threads connected me with others.

And so, I am content.

Forgive me.

 

Yours,

H.

---

Chapter End Notes

Title based on  "This Is Just To Say", by William Carlos Williams, in which the poet appropriates plums and makes a poem out of them.

 

Here is the complete text of the prompt:

Making a Skein

Dear Irmo,

My daughter-in-law enjoys knitting and crocheting. For her birthday, my husband and I gave her a generous skein of wool, for which she thanked us and seemed very pleased. Imagine my dismay, however, when six months later for our anniversary she gifted us with a lovely bedspread, which she told me she made with yarn from the skein! I told my son that we’d in effect paid for our own present and that he needs to communicate to his wife how improper and stingy this move was. He refuses, saying that her labor and time were also part of the gift. We haven’t spoken much since except to discuss our grandchildren, and our DIL has been outright cold. I’m considering writing her a letter directly explaining why this was an improper gift and expressing my sadness that her own parents didn’t teach her gift etiquette. My husband wants me to drop the whole thing and pretend like it never happened. Irmo, I don’t like the idea of moving on as if nothing happened.

(Adapted from Dear Prudence, 22 November 2018)

 

Stories written for the same prompt by Narya and Kaylee were previously posted here for this challenge and I highly recommend both those stories.

Paths of Story

I had briefly toyed with the idea of writing "This is just to say..."  (or rather an earlier version of that concept) in verse, as a fill for the tolkienfanworks challenge to write a piece based on any of the verse forms used by Bilbo.

That idea came to nothing, but my eventual fill for that challenge nevertheless is on a related subject. I decided to post this little poem as a second chapter here on this Archive, although I am posting the two pieces independently on other sites.

Summary: 

Walking song for a teller of stories.
(And maybe for readers of stories or listeners to stories, too.)

Adaptation of a familiar song by Bilbo.

My short piece here stays very close to Bilbo's own verse, but I think my adaptation brings out one of Tolkien's central themes (that was perhaps already implied and is also close to my own heart) more clearly and more strongly.

Read Paths of Story

Tales go ever on and on.
Who of us knows when they began?
The winding ways the tales have gone,
I will still follow if I can,
Pursue their paths with eager feet,
Until they join another lay
Where many strands and stories meet.
And whither then? Well, who can say?