Christmas 2000:
The annual report from Gideon Lawton Lane

Annual Christmas letters get a mixed reception: tossed unread, browsed lightly, responded to. In the aggregate, though, they have some historical value, some bits of information about who’s doing what. So here’s the archive.

Christmas greetings!

It hasn’t exactly been a quiet year here on Aquidneck Island, but we’re well, thanks, and hope you are too.

The nest is far from empty, but it’s not as full as it was last year. Our neighborhood is recycling itself, it seems, with little children now living to the north, south, east, and west. When we moved here 15 years ago, it was our driveway that had all the Big Wheels and sports gear strewn about and it was our lawn that seemed to sprout little bicycles. The families with kids in college seemed so ... well .. mature. Now here we are.

But we are enjoying life with larger, more sophisticated kids. The conversations are often extraordinary (everyone should experience the unique pleasure of engaging Dan in a philosophical argument, although the best of those conversations do not begin before midnight). But even the smaller domestic exchanges now have the ring of a wider worldview. What was once a simple “I’m hungry!” has become a more cosmopolitan “Yo Big Man! Hook me up with some comida!” (If we’re lucky, that ends with a “por favor.”)

So where are they now? Dan is halfway through his freshman year at the University of Vermont and seems to be enjoying himself, despite having consumed his entire semester’s allotment of meal points prior to the Thanksgiving break. He’s still fascinated by computer science, economics, and philosophy. Susan is within five months of finishing her high school career at Lincoln School and is fighting off senioritis until she’s safely into an institution of higher learning (current No. 1 fave: Simmons College in her favorite city, Boston). She’s interested in a career in early childhood education, perhaps an outgrowth of her monumentally succcessful babysitting career. (She’s parlayed that into a summer job as a live-in childcare person for a neighborhood client family that’s moving to Chicago). Anson is honing his hockey skills with an eye toward starting high school at Tabor Academy next fall, a place that has sent several of its alums to Division I college programs and careers in the NHL. (We’re not concerned; Tabor has high-caliber academics to match.) One surprise for us was Anson’s aptitude in geography. He placed No. 2 in the state in the National Geographic Society’s geo-bee, coming within one correct answer of a trip to the national competition in Washington. (Where’d he learn all that?) Anson and Susan will graduate on the same day next June, within hours of each other. We’re already planning a way for everyone to be everywhere at once, at opposite ends of the state.

Alli is in the final month of her year-long fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation. The Providence Singers, of which Mark and Alli are past-president and president respectively, is now a booming choral enterprise under Artistic Director Julian Wachner. We have enthusiastic reviews, larger audiences (we virtually sold out Veterans Memorial Auditorium for our Les Noces/Carmina Burana concert last month), a mushrooming budget, and a waiting list for auditions. What we do not have — yet — is the organizational firepower to go with it: sophisticated marketing, strategic planning, corporation-style financial controls, and — who would have guessed we’d ever need this? — investment management. We do well, but we’re definitely organized as a small community chorus. Alli has spent her fellowship studying how other choral groups have made the leap from dedicated amateur to near-professional status. She’s been to Canterbury, Salzburg, Baltimore, Oregon, and points in between and has interviewed some very high-powered choral organizations and musical leaders. The final few hundred dollars remaining in her fellowship budget will go toward running a strategic planning retreat, where the Singers Board will discuss how best to move the enterprise forward.

On the garden front (an annual theme; the rest of the household rolls its eyes and stifles a theatrical yawn), Mark made good on last year’s threat to acquire agricultural machinery. His rototiller now eats into the lawn bit by bit, adding small increments to the square-yards-under-cultivation figure. We now have our own Spargelbett (asparagus) and rhubarb plantation (Alli had hoped that she had left rhubarb behind when she moved East from Minnesota). As soon as the spring thaw arrives, we will acquire a substantial planting of low-bush blueberries and either raspberries (Dan’s vote) or high-bush blueberries (Alli’s vote, since that would extend the blueberry season). This will require additional fencing which, because of Mark’s tendency to overbuild, will be bomb- and earthquake-proof (though sadly not necessarily rabbit-proof). His sweat-soldering technique is improving: The new fence will have a perimeter sprinkling system built in. And now we’re reading up on non-ornamental fruit trees. This has clearly gone beyond a simple vegetable garden or household adornment. Izaak Walton had trout fishing; we have the garden. Must be a metaphor in there somewhere.

Looking back over the year, we’d have to say it’s been good — interesting, filled with projects, new ventures, and worthwhile activities. Even the one large shock to the family system — Anson’s diabetes, diagnosed last May — didn’t derail things for long. He packs his glucometer in his equipment bag for hockey tournaments, swigs judiciously from the Gatorade bottle during games, tests his blood at school, and copes perfectly well with multiple daily injections. The SAT people may think they can ban snacks during a three-hour test, but Anson now trumps their rules. At first he was plainly annoyed by his parents’ fussy concern, their insistence on calling to check on him whenever he’s home alone. But he’s demonstrated an unexpected generosity of spirit for an adolescent; he seems to understand that parents are hardwired for worry and so has decided to tolerate these well-intended invasions of his privacy (although not without drawing the line on occasion).

We are hoping this note finds you well, happy, healthy, involved in rewarding activities, and able to take a little time during the holiday season to relax, reflect, and adjust any perspectives that may have gotten out of whack during the year. Let us know how that’s going.

Love and best wishes,

Mark and Alli
Dan, Susan, Anson