Lord of the Wrings

I can still remember when I was first introduced to the magical world of J.R.R. Tolkien. I was in the seventh grade at the time.

Every month our English teacher would take our book orders and payment for the Scholastic Book Club (I think that’s what it was called) and mail it in. It’s been nearly forty-five years since then, so what led me to select the book The Hobbit is something lost in the Misty Mountains of memory.

When I received the yellow-orange paperback with the spidery script on the front cover, I took it home and set to reading it at once. I was soon drawn deep into its magical world. When I got to the end of the book, there was a little “clip and save” coupon on the last page. With this, one could order the three additional books that comprised the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The Hobbit, as it turned out, was merely a prelude.

Yes, please!

With Mom’s permission—and her check—I placed my order the very next day. A lifelong love affair with classic fantasy had begun.

I went on to devour all manner of novels in the genre, both famous and obscure. Not long into this obsession, I was also introduced to the iconic tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons by a classmate.

For many happy Saturday afternoons this game—and all of the books that went with it—captivated me. By the time I’d reached high school, if I wasn’t playing D&D with my friends, I was planning the next game session, or reading another fantasy novel to glean new ideas.

I clearly did—and still do—possess a fertile imagination. As I have gotten older and the structure of my daily life has changed with the passage of time, this capacity for fantasy has proven to be a double-edged sword.

* * *

Approaching my fifty-seventh birthday, I experienced one of those major life changes that occasionally occur to all of us, for good or ill. For me, it was leaving my private medical practice after nearly twenty-five years. I won’t delve into the details, as that isn’t important for the purposes of this story, but it was a change that was—though voluntary—not one I’d been planning to undertake at this point.

For the first time in my adult life, I found myself no longer working. Fortunately for me, this situation no longer posed a financial threat. However, I was quickly confronted by some stark realities about how my brain works.

As the writer Erma Bombeck once quipped: “I worry a lot, and frankly I’m good at it.”

Oh my, yes. Yes indeed.

I am most definitely cut from the same cloth as Ms. Bombeck.

I began to pursue new avenues for practicing medicine more on my own terms—but there were going to be a few idle months and some uncertainty on the way forward. Meanwhile, I had a wealth of free time on my hands.

My brain refused to view this as an opportunity to relax and unwind a bit. Instead it demanded a framework, some sort of external structure to push against. Lacking one, I quickly dissolved into a puddle of existential angst.

To distract myself from the feeling of disconnection I was struggling with, I picked up my old books from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and began reading them again. Almost immediately I could see a parallel between my brain and the all-seeing Eye of Sauron in the story—scanning the horizon, unblinking—searching relentlessly for problems that didn’t yet seem to exist.

Left unattended, my imagination was quite content to invent dragons in order to justify this constant vigilance. I was focusing on the shadows of things utterly beyond my control—things such as my aging parents and their health issues, thoughts of my own mortality, and wondering what I’d do if someday I outlived Sean and was left alone. Questions of, in the words of Douglas Adams, “Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

This was in spite of the fact that my life seemed mostly copacetic at the moment.

My family remained in decent health. Sean still had a job that he loved. We had good insurance and plenty of money, a house that was paid for, and a cat that—in exchange for a clean litter box, an always-full food bowl, and our undying fealty—allowed us to remain in her regal presence. Why was I spending all of my time clearing away the wreckage of the future?

I had turned into an Olympic-class hand wringer. Like Frodo Baggins, I appeared to have become a wring-bearer.

However, while Frodo’s magical One Ring corrupted its owner with ambition and greed, my “wring” corrupted through overthinking and restless pacing around the house while muttering under my breath.

Eventually Sean would call out in an exasperated tone from the den, “Geez Louise, would you sit down for five minutes? You’re wearing a hole in the floor!”

I knew he was right. I was being a bit ridiculous—holding my own private Council of Elrond and taking the shop-worn platitude of “putting one foot in front of the other” far too literally.

So, rather than marching the ring to Mount Doom in order to destroy it, I trooped upstairs to the bonus room over the garage and commenced my own Long March on the Treadmill to destroy my “wring.”

* * *

Later, tired and sweaty from the workout, I wandered to the laundry room, took off my gym shorts and shirt, and tossed them into the washing machine. I then turned to the dryer, waiting for the final two minutes of the cycle to finish so I could remove a pair of sneakers that had been thumping around for the last two hours while I’d been exercising.

Given my penchant for trying to walk off my anxiety, I began to imagine what might happen if I accidentally dropped my “wring of power” in the dryer along with my damp Adidas.

Instead of being revealed by fire, perhaps I’d discover it as an inscription on the soles of one of my sneakers—revealed by the rigors of the speed dry cycle:

One wring to rule them all,

One wring to find them.

One wring to bring them all,

And in the darkness bind them.

In the small hours of the morning

When my brain tells lies...

Yeah, that’s it. My brain tells lies.

Most of them start small—a whisper about a service appointment for the car I think I forgot, a flicker of worry over a crack in the drywall in the breakfast nook that’s been getting suspiciously longer—then snowball into full-blown sagas worthy of Tolkien himself. Orcs at the gates. Dragons on the wing. The cat’s sudden aloofness as proof I’m failing at basic companionship.

The buzzer on the dryer finally went off.

I opened the door and took the sneakers out—checking the soles despite knowing how crazy that was.

Of course there’s no inscription on them—no Eye of Sauron spying on me. Just the cat downstairs somewhere—stretching in a sunbeam—while Sean is probably wondering why I’m talking to myself as I unload the dryer.

My imagination has always spun tales—I can’t turn that off any more than I can parallel-park without swearing. Some unravel on their own.

But the rest?

They make decent kindling for the next story I’ll write—about a guy who used to read The Hobbit under the covers with a flashlight, and now does ridiculous things like conjure up images of enchanted footwear while pacing the living room when life gives him the silent treatment.

That’s enough. The wring is quieter now.

And tomorrow, if my brain starts lying again, I know where the treadmill is.