February 14, 2004

• Just For  Him

  
  

  We're all smitten by screen stars, for the very obvious reason that after hoards of people have spent oodles of hours making said star look attractive, someone's directed them how to most dashingly spend a music-filled few hours working their way through deep challenges, with all the appearance of heroic self-abnegation and breathtaking daring-do.  And of course, there are screen stars of all stripes for all varieties of viewers, regardless of one's preference.

  
  

  My own preferences lying a certain way, I was naturally drawn (as were approximately 10,432,639 other viewers worldwide) to that most unlikely hero of the latest epic:  Sam Gamgee.  I will admit to surfing a few sites for a peek at the actor himself, and found as well-coifed an on-line image as the screen version:  a dedicated husband and father with all the requisite Good Causes to his name.  And, of course, the usual laughingly-revealed all-too-human faults and foibles.

  
  

  Marking him as an actor to keep an eye on, I thought again about the character that Astin so well-portrayed.  Director Jackson's Sam Gamgee, interestingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, is the only one of the massive cast of that epic who made it almost unchanged from tale to screen.  He is the truest-of-the-true salt-of-the earth, a humble individual with the deepest of love and loyalty: loyalty so great, indeed, that of all the more dashing and devilish RingBearers before him, only Sam Gamgee -- simple straight-forward Sam -- never fell to the power of the dreadful thing he briefly bore.  Only Sam (even surpassing his much more worldly master) never abandoned the Good and the Right for either the fear or the self-aggrandizement of Evil.

  
  

  No wonder one finds oneself smitten by such a hero, thought I.  How, amid all the world's shadows and gray areas, can one not adore such shining purity?

  
  

  And then I was smitten by something else: a small, personal thunderbolt.

  
  

  I've married Sam Gamgee, I realized.

  
  

  And I have.  For starters, my own Gamgee much resembles the character in appearance (I've ever been one for stalwart, well-fleshed sinew; willowy pretty boys need not apply).  My own Gamgee loves the soil and the field: his gentle husbanding of plant and animal fill our pantries with good food born of honest toil and our gardens and verges with beautifully fragrant flowers and herbs.  My own Gamgee is a man of few words, and those straightforwardly-spoken; he doesn't bear much with artifice and politicking.  My own Gamgee is a man of hearth and home, and although he has wondered far afield on adventures of his own (and my) making, his heart always remains in our own quiet, rural hobbit-hole.  My own Gamgee knows what is good and what is bad, and he sticks to his convictions regardless.

  
  

  And most importantly, when he and I have climbed -- as all couples must, some more than once -- that marital Mount Doom, he has most assuredly, amidst the wind, the evil ash and falling rock, said to me:  "If I can't carry it, Ms. LMF, then I can carry you," and lifted up me, and all the burdens I bear, and staggered on over terrain I myself couldn't find the strength to tread.

  
  

  Then, after the end of all things, when peace and calm descend again, my Gamgee can, in fun and frolic, literally lift me up and parade about the house to the delighted squeals of our little ones.

  
  

  If you're already married to the star, why ever look elsewhere?

  
  

   

  
  

  Happy Valentine's Day to you and your own Star!

  
  

   

  • 3:49 am
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