Christmas 2015:
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.

Sunday, December 20, 2015
The third Stollen of Advent

Dear Family and Friends,

Out on the deck, a bright red geranium is holding its own against the season. On the far side of the back yard, our new little magnolia is budding. The garden served up fresh Brussels sprouts for dinner today, with more awaiting harvest. Time and the seasons seem out of joint here on the Lane. It’s mid-December but it could easily pass for spring.

Snow or not, we are moving into the holiday season. The Providence Singers eighth annual Messiah with the Rhode Island Philharmonic was an unusually fulfilling performance informed by Baroque practice, full of nuanced dynamics and tapered phrases, punctuated by noticeably precise staccati (“the dot means distinct, not just short”), and graced by period-expert soloists whose ornamentation was fresh, exquisite, and inventive. It felt like we were singing it for the first time.

We’ve also cut down a tree and decorated it. The process does go faster when it’s just the two of us. Pull in. Get a saw. Spot a good tree. Trim off a few dead branches. Cut it down. Tie it to the roof and head home. We admit to a little nostalgia for the days when kids and parents would find several candidates, debate their merits for a while, then settle for the one farthest away from the car.

Summer had multiple highlights, most especially the wedding of Anson and Reva in June. It was an exuberant and intriguing ceremony that honored traditions, blended cultures, splashed bright colors and lights around the hall, incorporated music from Stevie Wonder (processional) and The Beatles (recessional), and drew guests to Brooklyn from several continents. Parents and siblings participated (Susan and Priya, Reva’s sister, brought the garlands forward; Dan was the Keeper of the Ceremonial Fire), several dozen Brown alums were on hand, and the festivities continued into the wee hours.

Dan from Madrid, Susan and George from Washington, D.C., and Anson and Reva from Brooklyn will be arriving here in a few days. Being together twice in one year is a rare and welcome experience.

One hundred and fifty years ago last summer, Mark’s great-great-grandfather Fritz Mueller sold Bosenbüttel, his country estate, and boarded a wooden sailing ship in Bremerhaven with his wife and nine kids. We spent a night in Bremerhaven last July, overlooking the harbor where the Muellers emigrated. In the morning, we punched Bosenbüttel into the rented Nissan’s GPS and were astounded to find ourselves standing in the 19th-century Bosenbüttel barnyard an hour later, chatting in German with Rainer Stoll, whose family has owned the place for at least three generations. It was a chance meeting. Rainer listened patiently to Mark’s extemporized German narration about his zweimal Ur-Großvater Friedrich Müller. Then Rainer asked, “Heißt er Fritz?” (Was he called Fritz?) and we knew we’d found our man.

Rainer pulled out his phone, made a call, then asked us to follow him to the little town of Midlum, where we met his parents, Wilhelm und Ilse, and spent a couple hours talking over Kaffee und Kuchen. The Stolls are not relatives, but they know their farm’s history and that means knowing the Müllers and the 19th-century Müller family tree. They had met several visiting Mueller descendants over the years and remember a concert decades ago by a young couple who were also interested in Bosenbüttel. Another surprise: That couple was Mark’s brother Tim and his wife Nancy.

It was a magical trip that began in The Hague, where we watched niece Elsa compete in the World Beach Volleyball Championships (she and Lili won all the matches we saw), and continued by train to Amsterdam and then to Bremen, where we rented the Nissan. We avoided the autobahn, stopping in little Dorfs on the way to Hamburg and Berlin, following beautifully maintained country roads that had the look and feel of southern Minnesota. With Holsteins. We felt profoundly at home.

The new year will bring at least one significant change: Marcus wird in den Ruhestand treten. (Even in German it’s still the R-word, retirement.) That is scheduled to happen at close of business Friday, February 5. We think we are prepared for the new order — discussing travel destinations and reworking a bedroom so that we will each have an office — but retirement will likely prove to be one of those states like parenthood, where adequate preparation is delusional.

Alli has had a year’s head start. She is delving far more deeply into the Steinway, taking weekly lessons from the Providence Singers’ pianist. The house rings with Beethoven sonatas, Bach preludes and fugues, Schumann, and the occasional Pärt. She’s reestablishing a high level of technique and is finding new joy in being able to realize the music as she hears it in her head. There’s politics as well. Alli has met both Hillary and Bill at small gatherings. Her 2008 photo with Hillary is one of the household’s great trophies. (Bill’s photo-ops are still a bit too pricey.)

Yes, of course, and thanks for asking — the garden is still with us. It’s entering a sort of Garden 2.0 era, with new cedar fence posts along the eastern side and radical pruning of the original blueberry bushes. The dirt itself is richer, not just with manure but with a container of earth from the Bosenbüttel fields, smuggled back to Rhode Island in a suitcase and scattered with minimal ceremony over the garden here on the Lane. That closed the circle, the garden already incorporating dirt from the original immigrant Mueller farm in Kendallville, Indiana, secured during the 2007 Great Heartland Tour of the four Nickel Boys. Obsessive? Perhaps, but absolutely echt.

Summer’s end found us on Martha’s Vineyard, where the McMillans gathered for the wedding of our nephew Ben and Julianna Guill. Ben and Jules, writer and actress, live in California. Their ceremony, with creative friends officially presiding, was a lively piece of work — hilarious at times, serious when it needed to be, genuine and compelling throughout.

Summer was a potent combination of family and friends, a sense of generations on the march, the primal urge to hold onto summer as it inevitably fades, and the prospect of coming change. We welcome change and its promise of fresh discoveries, whether a weekend visit with old friends, a “My, how you’ve grown” encounter with grand-nieces and grand-nephews, or a chance meeting with Rainer Stoll in his green overalls. We hope your New Year is chock full of happy discoveries.

With love and best wishes,

Mark and Alli
mark-nickel@cox.net
401-835-1913
allison-mcmillan@cox.net
401-225-3659