There is little for him to note the passage of time. His face remains unlined, hair still thick with tawny curls, clothes well-pressed and buttons shining with the care he gives them, and the comforting weight in his pocket remains, soothing like a balm each time his finger caresses its smooth warm surface. Likewise outside, the village remains. The Mill and The Green Dragon and the markets bustling every Highday, and Hamfast, good Hamfast, who drops in every week to fix his garden and leaves the bag of Old Toby by his doorstep.
He forgets to count the days and the seasons, and lets them slip by. You have to live in the present, for it is a gift, his mother used to say. So live he does, in the here, in the now, and does not look back to what had been, and dares not look hence to what could be.
Until his door sounds with a knock one day; and it's not Hamfast because Hamfast knows never to ask for him, and it's not Lobelia because the door is still standing. It is a pleasant, if tentative, sort of knocking, and not at all expected.
What are you doing? He asks himself as he presses his ear up against the cracks. Just let them leave. He could just let them go, he could. Why did it matter who they were, or why they had come? Why did it matter that he could let them in, brew some tea, and have some one, some other voice inside his home besides his own?
Then the door is open, by its accord if he believes himself, and the couple standing before him beams.
"Cousin Bilbo," Cousin Drogo had come all the way across the Brandywine to say, and hefts the bundle in his arms. "Meet our son."
Black hair peeks from under swaddling cloth, and the little face is scrunching up, making ready to cry. He takes a step back, bracing for a piercing scream.
But it is merely a yawn in the end, and then the lines soften, round out, as the child blinks open his eyes.
Blue eyes. Blue summer sky eyes. Azure now in the morning light, but perhaps they would darken at duskfall, deepening to a midnight lake with flecks like stars caught in the still mirror sheen. Perhaps they would lighten aquamarine when caught in the lift of a smile, or spark amber on indigo when in the throes of anger, or shadow almost-black when concealing hidden hurts, doubt and despair spilling from their abyss.
Perhaps he is imagining, here, that they fix upon him now in that same familiar gaze that bores straight into his soul.
So he stares down at the child and dares not step back, for fear he might end up flat on the floor, the strength is trickling from his legs and he may not remain upright for very long.
"This is your uncle, Frodo," his mother chuckles as she strokes the babe's hair, and Cousin Drogo laughs along and pulls him closer to them.
He knows now that he must, he must try. So he musters a breath and leans forward above the child, freezing his face into a smile as he tries to put voice to words, for the first time in a long, long time.
"My dear Frodo."