Christmas 2024:
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.

December 21, 2024
The Second Stollen of Advent

Dear Friends,

From the outside looking in, life at Opa and Oma’s home on the Lane may seem a bit monochromatic this year, perhaps in need of a little pepping up, a bit more variety. True, we have no exotic Galapagos trips to report, no beachcombing, no travel this year, but we are creating a different, adaptive and necessary lifestyle.

Healthcare professionals use a Hoyer lift to move patients around, but we have adapted that technology. We are now skilled operators of the “Flying Oma Device.” With a little hydraulic pumping, Oma rises mystically from her bed in a stylish blue and green hammock. She flies a few feet to her left, hovers briefly over the wheelchair, and gradually descends. A trip up the ramp and down the hall leads to breakfast at the kitchen table. In summer, Alli then heads safely down a short ramp to the deck, where she takes the Flying Oma Device to the chaise longue. Grandkids have been amazed. If it’s rainy or not warm enough, Alli heads to Dan’s leather recliner in the family room. The whole idea is to be up, out of bed every day, and wheeling around the first floor and the deck. We and our dedicated in-home care team do that quite well now.

But no one who strolls into our kitchen would suggest that life on the Lane is even remotely monochromatic. The cabinet fronts and refrigerator doors are riots of color – mostly tempera paint, watercolor, and magic marker, part of a growing collection of original grandkid art. There are creations from at least four years, some from Thomas, 8, some from Archie, 6, and a few unsigned works likely from James, 6, and Leia, now 4. Olivia, who just turned 2, will add her work soon, perhaps when she visits in late January. We have been bowled over by the wonders of grandparenting and are looking forward to ever greater wonderment as the grandkids work their way through preteen and teen years onward to young adulthood.

During a Thanksgiving visit, granddaughter Leia made a stop-the-presses discovery that launched Opa on a new project. Exploring a stack of books under the family room coffee table, she pulled out a copy of Struwwelpeter [STREW-ful-pay-tur], a notorious children’s book written in 1844 by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann, a German psychiatrist. The book was an immediate success in Europe and beyond. Opa’s great-great-grandfather Fritz Mueller (b. 1822) likely read it to his kids in Germany before the family emigrated, and dozens of Mueller households across four generations had copies in German or English or both. Opa hadn’t seen this heirloom copy since he was a first grader and wasn’t even aware it was in the house. It is now part of FrauErica.org, Opa’s online Mueller history project, in both German and English.

Struwwelpeter is actually Part Two of a recent expansion of the FrauErica.org site. Part One, just getting underway in late 2023, is also now complete. The Sängerbote [ZENG-air-boat-eh] is Opa’s 178-page compendium of all 55 Mueller contributions to a German literary and musical quarterly published in St. Louis for five years (1913-17). The new Sängerbote project includes a photocopy of the original page, a transliteration of the old-style German type, and an English translation for each of seven essays and 48 works of poetry. The entire Mueller Sängerbote output is now part of the FrauErica.org site.

While the Flying Oma Device makes mobility possible, we have also been expanding our digital communications. During our childhoods, international telephone calls were an extravagant, exotic, and impossibly expensive proposition, so we are still amazed at our free and frequent FaceTime video conversations with family in Madrid and Zoom sessions with McMillans at home and abroad. Those video interactions, together with visits from friends and relations, help keep our worldview wide open. May was a case in point, with several of Alli’s classmates and former hockey teammates stopping by during the Brown Class of 1974 50th Reunion Weekend, some bearing Brown alumni/ae swag, no less (thank you, classmates!).

Loaf number one of Christmas Stollen is already history, and there are ingredients on hand for loaf number two, likely this weekend. Alli’s habit of taping Christmas cards around the passthrough between the kitchen and family room is also well underway. Bit by bit the holiday season is making its way determinedly into the day-to-day here on the Lane. We hope that’s true for your abode as well. It’s been a rocky year for everyone, with more rockiness likely to come. With luck, peace on Earth and goodwill among everyone will find a way to persevere.

Hopefully, and with lots of love,

Alli and Mark
 
Both now at mark101nickel@gmail.com
(401) 835-1913