On New Year's Eve 2024...

Dear Valued Customer,

The light of distant stars gleam, bright and sharp in the vast black sphere of the moonless heavens. Imperceptible to human view, a new moon begins to grow again. But’s too cold to linger on the steps outside gazing upwards.

It’s time to close the doors, draw the curtains, and ready ourselves for a New Year’s celebration.

We hover on the threshold in a brief moment of melancholy, turning away from the contemplation of the firmament’s immutable and indifferent majesty and of the span of years left behind. Joy and sorrow, opportunity lost and gained, victories and disappointments. What delights and what tests, we wonder, will the next year bring.

And then the door to the dining room bursts open. A child barrels through it, blowing lustily into a tinsel horn. In the kitchen, his cousins are assembling pots, pans and metal spoons, ready to jump off chairs with a clamor as soon as the clock strikes twelve.

There are still oysters to finish taking out of their shells, a meal to set on the table, an “omelette norvegienne” -- a Baked Alaska – to prepare. Party hats, crackers, and gold-wrapped chocolate coins to set around the table.

We are back in Europe, after a long stay in our old Maryland home. There, we celebrated the happy wedding of our youngest son with a young woman whom we will love like one of our own. We ate, toasted and danced the night away. The choreography of Edward and his bride rivalled the finest moments of disco and incorporated the best of le rock français. And perhaps most touching of all to me, “You are the Sunshine of My Life” was the song Edward chose for our own dance. He knows how dear he is to me!

On the way home from the wedding, which took place in Vermont, we stopped at the family place in the Hudson River Valley.

It had been many years since I walked through the house, the gardens, the fields and orchards. In the barnyard were the stalls, still hay-scented, where my sister and I used to saddle our horses. We once found our great-uncle’s polo mallets here, and with our cousins improvised wild chases on horseback across the meadows. Once, my horse stumbled, fell, and rolled completely over me. Unimpaired, to our mutual astonishment, the pair of us dashed away to catch up with the others.

Memories linger in every dusty corner and angle of light. In the packing barn, now collapsing, apples were carefully unloaded onto a noisy wooden belt, sorted, and packed in crates. In my mind’s eye, my father and his brother stand together in a beam of sunlight, motes of dust from the barn’s dirt floor swirling slowly around them. They’d been intent on the harvest and next year’s campaign, close and complicit in their separate world of responsibility and work.

In the old kitchen, where we took a cup of tea with my cousins, we used to eat our morning oatmeal under the grimly attentive eye of our grandmother’s housekeeper. I once tried to compliment her.

“That’s a nice dress, Betty!” I remarked brightly, although I didn’t like the dark and gloomy print myself.

“I’m just trying to wear it out,” she replied, unmoved.

Upstairs, in Grandmother’s cool and shadowy bedroom, I used to study her evening dresses. I found chocolates in her sewing drawer and tried to read a slim volume, with tiny print, of “Paul et Virginie.” It was my great-grandmother’s leatherbound edition, and this was where she also slept. Much later, my mother wrote her thesis on the patriarchs of the Old Testament here.

It was hard to leave the old place.

But back in Maryland, we live on our own farm, made during our own beginnings. In our first year of marriage, we bought abandoned dairy pastures that had long-since returned to woodlands. The land was close to the place where my husband was born, and where his mother’s family had always lived. We built a house and barns, planted an orchard and blackberries, and made a garden. Our children were brought here as newborns. And although we moved to France many years ago, this place is still our American foothold.

We stayed on the farm through Boxing Day. We feasted on turkey at Thanksgiving and ate goose at Christmas. My mother’s creamed onion recipe was dusted off again. On these wonderful occasions, we were surrounded by all our children and their families. We spent time with our brothers and sisters. We saw old friends.

On Thanksgiving day, Monsieur worked on his second gypsy wagon. The first had been constructed with our children in France. This time, some of their children were now old enough to pass him nails and a hammer. To the great delight of little Charles, he also cut down a pair of beech in front of the house. We’d dug them up in the woods and planted them the year Edward was born, inspired by the venerable beech in front of his grandparents’ house nearby. Family initials were carved deep into that one.

The pair of trees, neglected during our long séjour in France, had not benefited from proper pruning. They were not graceful. They had too many branches. And they now appeared too close to the house. At last, with regret, I yielded to their demise. Monsieur took up his chainsaw and hurried outside. Little Charlot followed him. I watched from an upper window as the trees toppled over. Leaping from one leg to the other in excitement, the little boy shrieked with admiration,

“I see it falling, I see it falling!”

Our oldest son and his own son gathered the logs in the front-end loader of the tractor and drove them away to the woodpile. Only a pair of stumps and two piles of sawdust remained. But now, I noticed, we could see the garden out front and the surrounding fields. We could see into the woods.

“And the grass will grow,” said Monsieur with satisfaction. He doesn’t believe in mowing very often, but he likes a greensward.

On Christmas Eve, we celebrated the mass with cousins in a small church nearby. Familiar names mark the stained-glass windows; past generations of local families are buried in the churchyard.

On every veillée de Noël in our parish church in France, we sing “Minuit, chrétiens!” It is a French song whose lyrics were written in 1843, and it is much loved. That night, our daughter sang “O Holy Night,” the English translation, for the tiny congregation. We all joined in.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining
'Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!”

“Le monde entier tressaille d’espérence

A cette nuit qui lui donne un saveur!”

Beside the tree the next morning, the children stared longingly at presents. They opened stockings. And by the time breakfast was ready, wrapping paper and ribbon lay as thick as autumn leaves piled under an oak.

Later on, we feasted on our roast goose and a bûche de noël. Christmas crackers popped. Little pieces of paper and miniature tools flew onto the table and floor.

“Who’s Elton John?” nine-year-old James wondered, seizing a scrap of paper and reading the joke. “Why did he go on a diet and why did he say,

“Good-bye Normal Jeans”?”

We laughed. He rolled his eyes and sank his head into a new manga comic.

Little Charlot was delighted. He traded a tiny whisk for a little tape measure, just right for his four-year-old hands.

Meanwhile, young Dorothée patiently showed baby Charlotte how to pull on a ribbon to untie her present. Charlotte, looking at her cousin with admiring eyes, let Dorothée carefully unfold the wrapping. The process and the relationship far outweighed her interest in new stockings and a toy.

These are rich and delightful moments. A few shadows passed in the last few months, nonetheless. We mourned the death of a cherished colleague. We learned of illnesses among those dear to us. And like all parents, we hover about our offspring and their progeniture, wishing we could spare them the pains and perils that will surely come their way.

And so the year ends.

Embers glimmer on the hearth. Light flickers and then is dark. But like a bright fire dying, the afterglow of those happy times fills a heart with happy warmth.

Bonne année a vous, mes amis!

Happy New Year 2025!

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Chateau de Courtomer may be rented for private events, seminars, and stays. We are taking bookings for 2025 through 2026 and 2027 for the Chateau and the Farmhouse, either together or separately.

The newly-renovated one-bedroom Gatehouse is also welcoming guests.

The Orangerie is rented separately for dinners, seminars, and other events.

English and French spoken. Concierge services available.

Heather (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be delighted to help you with your enquiries and dates, and to preview the property on site.