Christmas 2019:
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 15 December 2019
The Second Stollen of Advent

Dear Friends,

As you walk from our family room toward what is now our guest quarters, the first door on your left is the old sports closet. For most of our years here, opening that door meant ducking a gush of sports stuff: hockey helmets, tennis racquets, baseball bats, Mark’s old Pony League glove, ice skates, lacrosse pads, rollerblades, Susan’s field hockey stick (mint condition), Brown Pandas hockey jersey, softballs, beach towels, golf spikes and, well, you get the idea.

You’ll now find new iconic equipment hanging there: two pairs of Yak Trax from our winter trip to Yellowstone Park — part memento, part accommodation. Yak Trax do for hiking boots what chains do for snow tires. They got us safely over patches of glare ice as we hiked around in hydrothermal fields, steadied us as we observed bison, elk, coyotes, trumpeter swans, and took us reliably forward for closer inspection of mud springs, fumaroles, geysers and hot springs. We heartily recommend Yellowstone in winter. No crowds (a not-too-distant group of bison outnumbered visitors at Old Faithful), colorful geology with otherworldly shapes, plenty of room in the lodges, and winter vistas beyond description.

As for the accommodation part, the Yak Trax join a collection that already includes hiking poles, walking sticks (Mark’s has a camera mount in the handle), and a bit of niche-styled outdoor apparel — things that help older hikers keep on keepin’ on whether in Yellowstone or on an icy driveway. Balance is a new issue. Alli began coping with symptoms of ataxia this year, what we call “the wobblies.” Brain and body make immediate intuitive adjustments to compensate for a faulty gyroscope — wider stance, shorter strides — but we’re on the hunt for more detailed diagnosis and effective intervention. Meantime, we’ll use our Yak Trax and Leki poles.

This year, Christmas will find our extended family in Richmond, Virginia, with Susan and George. The three little cousin guys — Thomas, Archie, and James — will be getting together for the first time ever. There’s a good possibility Opa and Oma will spend at least one evening babysitting the three of them while the “middle generation” — Dan and Aliki, Susan and George, Anson and Reva — gets a rare night out together. We’re looking forward to it.

Grandparenting suits us supremely well, particularly the current efforts at language acquisition. After receiving more than a year’s worth of visual and aural data, the brave little brains begin to impose order. The names of things are a first step. On a visit to the zoo more than a year ago, Thomas’s first close encounter with a live ostrich brought us “Big Duck.” Archie, who knows cars, trucks, buses and the woo-woo sound of sirens, developed the new category “Woo-car” — what we know as emergency vehicles. At 15 months, James will be adding to our list of iconic coinages. We’ll be listening and taking notes.

The garden, you ask? Why yes, it’s thriving. New this year: a small outdoor room built of construction-grade cedar, hardware cloth and chicken wire, all designed to produce a harvest of heirloom popcorn. Predatory squirrels had claimed every single kernel of the previous year’s crop, but the “Corn Palace” produced a fine squirrel-proof harvest this year — and led to the first draft of rhymed text for a children’s book. (Susan gently advised against using the phrase “criminal intent” to describe squirrel motivation.) The degree of flavor difference between heirloom popcorn and Orville Redenbacher’s is about the same as between hothouse tomatoes and heirloom fruit from the garden. Even an angry gardener can’t blame the squirrels for eating heirloom popcorn; the stuff is tasty.

The garden also has new raised beds and well-constructed paths with stepping stones, a bit of work that comports with the accommodation theme. The paths should greatly reduce the weeding task and give the older gardener better access to crops from the wheeled garden seat that Thomas considers to be Opa’s tractor.

Overall, retirement still suits us. We aim for at least one large trip (Galapagos, Yellowstone) during the year and generally find our way also to Madrid, Richmond, and Brooklyn. The singing continues (we’ll do the Verdi Requiem in May with the Philharmonic), and service on the Providence Singers Board of Trustees remains rewarding, though Alli’s term ends in June and Mark’s a year later.

We’re not real birders yet, but we are paying closer attention to what’s happening right in the backyard: cedar waxwings, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers (the Woody Woodpecker kind), black-capped chickadees, dark-eyed junkos (the slate-colored variety), hawks of various kinds, a snowy owl (on our walks at Sakonnet Point), different finches, and the usual robins, cardinals, jays, mourning doves, sparrows and so forth. Binoculars and the Peterson Guide are always out. We had thought the goldfinches left for winter, but it turns out that they’re here all year. They change into drab brown feathers for fall and winter. All of this has been going on for decades; we are finally taking the time and interest to notice.

Our advice, sought or not: Don’t wait for retirement before taking a step back, resetting some parameters, and developing new interests. You’re probably on that course already, awaiting a new year full of discoveries and new or renewed interests. We hope that works out splendidly. Give us a shout and let us know how it’s going.

With love,

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