The Gamgees

Elanor
Frodo had known for many years that he would never be a father, and this had not grieved him greatly. He was content with spoiling young cousins who adored him, and Bag End did not lack for the sound of children’s voices.
 
It is a shock, then, this slicing combination of joy and envy and loss that is Elanor. Perhaps it is because he knows, already, that he will never see this baby become a lass. This is the last child he will buy outrageous gifts for (and thus he makes certain they are especially extravagant), the last child he will tell bedtime stories (though she is too young now to recall them later), and the last child who will contentedly snuggle into his chest and sigh, “Fro.”
 
He has saved the world for this beautiful child, he has given up all that he has for her, but never did he know how achingly bitter it would be to give her up as well.
 
Frodo
Frodo-lad has a round, kind Gamgee face, and strong Gamgee hands that were seemingly born buried in the soil, coaxing life out of it. So it is that Sam does not understand how he can sometimes see a shadow of the hobbit his son is named for in those plain features. It is something in Frodo-lad’s eyes, he thinks, that harkens to a greater understanding of the world around them, and a sadness for things that have passed.
 
Rose
Rose-lass has been in love with Pippin Took since infancy, when she would follow him about on unsteady legs, gazing up at him with glowing eyes. It was darling at that age, and adorable when she was a very small lass and shamelessly courted him with biscuits and glass beads and stories that began, “Mr. Pippin, did you know?” It was sweet, though a mite troubling, when she was a slightly older child and her worship became shy, composed of sighs and blushes and stolen gazes at the object of her affection. When she was a teen-ager, it manifested in her prettiest dresses and pinched cheeks and carefully arranged hair whenever the Thain came to visit, and Rose finally told her that this nonsense has to stop. Rose-lass was haughty and disregarding of her mother, and merely learned to hide her heart better, nurturing her love and dreams covertly. She scorned the lads her own age who sought out her company, and by the time she was a tween-ager, her parents feared she had made for herself a life of disappointment and loneliness.
 
It is to everyone’s enormous relief, then, when at Elanor’s wedding, Rose is caught with her dress mussed and her cheeks flushed behind the tool shed with Tripp Bolger, Fredegar and Maisy’s oldest son. He is as far from Pippin Took in manner and appearance that one can imagine, and in truth, Sam and Rose do not understand the attraction. Tripp is a kind lad, though (if not particularly hard-working or learned), and it is with great pleasure that Rose and Sam see the Thain dance with their second daughter on her wedding day.
 
Merry and Pippin
“We really should of known better than to name those lads Merry and Pippin,” Sam said to Rose after one particularly difficult day.

“Aye,” Rose agreed.
 
Goldilocks and Hamfast
When Hamfast cries, Goldilocks gets impatient and snaps at him, but Faramir always puts an arm about the younger lad and says, “Don’t cry, Hammie, Goldilocks and I will take care of you.” He then, naturally, proceeds to force Hamfast into doing whatever it was that frightened him into crying in the first place, and that more often than not leads to the three of them being sent to bed without supper once they are discovered.
 
Sam worries about Goldilocks’ sharp edges, but Rose tells him that they will round and blunt once the lass learns that she does not need them to be on equal footing with the lads. Rose worries that Hamfast will never get his legs up under him, that he will be this whimpering child for all his life, but Sam reassures her that Hamfast has too much good hobbit-sense born and bred into him for that, and that someday he will come into his own.
 
Daisy and Primrose
Daisy and Primrose are never far from each other, and their lives are filled with whispered secrets and promises and dreams. They are scornful of Goldilocks, whose dresses are eternally soiled and mussed and ripped, and whose bright curls (which her younger sisters silently envy) are often tangled and sprinkled with blades of grass and burrs and leaves. They agree early on that they simply must marry brothers, so that they can live together all their lives, and that while adventures may sound exciting when Dad tells about them in front of the warm fire in their cozy home, they are something to be avoided in real life.
 
When Daisy marries young and hastily and necessarily, she moves to Buckland with the lad (who, alas, has no brothers) and Primrose refuses to get out of bed for a week. Nothing Rose says will comfort her, and finally Sam takes the matter in hand and bullies her up. He drags her with him on a trip to Rivendell (much to Goldilocks’ ire), and when she hears elves singing for the first time, something deep inside her breast stirs and awakens.
 
“Who would have thought that Primrose was a poet?” Frodo-lad says, not unkindly, and Sam thinks of reciting silly verses about trolls on an October night outside of Rivendell.
 
Bilbo
Bilbo has imbibed none of the wanderlust or oddities of the hobbit he is named for. He has no use for poetry or history or dwarves or elves. He does not even care for flowers or trees. He does, however, love neatly plowed fields and growing crops and vegetables, and when he is 17 he wins a prize at the Fair for the biggest potatoes anyone has ever seen. It is hard to be disappointed in such a willingly obedient and good-natured (if somewhat dull) child, so Sam gives the lad the highest compliment he can think of: “The Gaffer would be so proud of you.”
 
Ruby
Ruby was such a happy, placid baby that no one gave much thought to that fact that she had not yet begun to speak. After all, with 10 older siblings overrunning Bag End, she would hardly have been heard over the din. It is not until one day when Rose-lass knocked over an entire stack of cooking-ware directly behind the toddler and she did not respond that Sam and Rose began to worry. They banged spoons onto pans beside their daughter, and yelled directly into her ear, but Ruby did not look up from her fascination with Daisy’s old doll.
 
They taught her to read and write, eventually, with much agony, and once she learned language, Ruby was a wealth of things to say. They could not begrudge her the paper, and over her lifetime, she wrote enough to rival the contents of the Red Book. But Sam always wondered what her voice would have sounded like, and wished she could know the sweet sound of her mother’s singing.
 
Robin
Robin loves all things that grow, and she is never happier than when she is working in a garden, in between her father and Frodo-lad. She knows every flower by name before she knows her letters, and when she is not allowed outside because of weather or health or party clothing, she is mournful and listless. Frodo-lad will sneak her in a handful of wildflowers at these times, rewarded by a glorious smile on his small sister’s chubby face and a thankful kiss on his cheek.

Tolman
“We’ve ended with an unlucky number, you know,” Sam said to Rose as he diapered little Tolman.
 
“If you want to end with 14, you’d best discover a way to carry the next one yourself,” Rose said without looking up from folding linens.
 
“I suppose you’ll just have to do then,” Sam said to Tolman. The baby smiled happily, and then peed down the front of Sam’s shirt. 

The Brandybucks

Periadoc and Éowyn
Merry and Estella had nearly despaired of ever having a child when Periadoc finally came. Before his first year was out, he was joined by Éowyn. When Merry held Periadoc over the cradle to see his sister for the first time, Periadoc leaned down and said in awe, “Oh, ba!”
 
They speak a secret language to one another in their many hiding places, forgotten closets and overlooked cupboards and hidden hollows in the riverbank. When he was 11 and playing with some other lads, Periadoc fell down a sharp overhang and broke his leg. The other lads could not find him and Periadoc lay unconscious for several hours. While all of Brandy Hall emptied to search for the child, Éowyn took her father by the hand and unerringly led him to the overhang and pointed down to her brother. Merry could see nothing below in the deepening twilight, but he trusted his children’s connection and carefully climbed down to discover his son. When Estella later asked Éowyn how she had known where Periadoc was, Éowyn simply said, “I always know where Periadoc is.”
 
Estel
It is Estel, the son of Merry and Estella’s later years, past when they thought any more children would be forthcoming, who came out looking like a small replica of Peregrin Took. It is not so surprising, really, with both Merry and Estella’s strong Took bloodlines, but it still startles Merry, to be walking toward the Hall and see this small bundle of energy and chestnut curls tearing toward him with his arms open, begging to be picked up and swung around. Some days, for just a moment, he is not sure where in time he is, and it is another hobbit-lad he sees rushing toward him, crying, “Merry! Merry!” instead of the “Da! Da!” that Estel greets him with. 

The Tooks

Faramir
By the time Faramir is seven, Diamond is spending more time with her relatives in the North Farthing than she is at the Smials. Pervinca had wrested management of the household affairs from her sister-in-law before Diamond had even learned her way about the burrow, and while she loves her husband, Diamond has discovered that love does not always overcome dissimilarity. She is a foreigner here in this place she should be mistress of, and she is young and misses her mother and sisters.
 
Faramir does not know all this, but he knows that as he grows older, he sees his mother less and less. It is not so bad: Briony kisses his small hurts and rocks him when he cannot sleep, and his father takes him everywhere with him, even as far as Bree. Faramir’s father is his best companion, and he openly adores him. They will have grand adventures together, Pippin assures his son, once Faramir is a little older. Faramir feels he will burst with the waiting to grow up, but when Pippin carries his sleeping son to bed, he cradles the small body close and wishes the sweet joy of this moment would never end.

(NOTE: Merry and Estella Brandybuck’s children are my characters and not accounted for in the family trees. As Merry’s generation is the last listed in that family tree, nothing in Tolkien’s work mandates that he not have children. The name of their oldest son, Periadoc, is taken from Llinos and Marigold’s Hobbits Abroad.)