Souvenir de ma Mère

Above: photographed in late May at Chateau de Courtomer...looking through linden leaves in the allée up to blue sky and the branches of a plane tree

France celebrates the "Fête des mères" in a few weeks...

Chère amie, cher ami,

It was Mothers Day last Sunday in America. Soon, it will be la Fête des Mères in France. I hope you will enjoy this petit souvenir of my own mother, on her first visit to Courtomer. Then, a bit of family news!
 
Standing on the steps of the Chateau, she struck me as surprisingly small, a diminutive figure in black against the golden stones of the façade. She wore a red beret, bright as a leaf in autumn. We had come out from Paris, my mother and I, to spend the afternoon at the Chateau. She was visiting from the United States, and I had taken the day off from minding our household of five children and my other usual occupations.
 
It was a clear day in late spring, at that moment when it is suddenly certain that winter, with its glowering skies and nipping wind, is done. The branches of trees were no longer bare wood with a few buds and tightly furled green leaves, but sumptuous with fresh foliage fanning out into the balmy air.

Looking out the window of the Farmhouse at Chateau de Courtomer, toward the linden allées, on a green morning in May.

We were in the mood to be delighted. Along the way, we stopped in the little town of Moulins-la-Marche to have lunch. I had been to the restaurant once before, and knew my companion would like it. The Dauphin is gone now, but it was one of those family-run establishments that a person motoring through France in the 1950s would have instantly recognized as a reliable place to eat. The tile floor gleamed with cleanliness; sunlight flooded in through pristine windows. The heavy floral curtains were obviously in the taste of another generation. The table-cloth was impeccably starched and the solid cutlery and respectable china and glass were laid out comme il faut.
 
Madame took our order sternly, writing it down as though it were a traffic infraction. But we knew this was merely her manner of showing that she took pride in her establishment and the menu. A few minutes later, we heard the kitchen door bang as she called out to her husband:
 
“Les Américaines prennent le plat du jour ! » 
 
The day’s special was côtes de veau in cream accompanied with purée de pomme de terre – mashed potatoes and butter – and haricots verts with more butter. We toasted each other from a picher of good red vin de table. Cheese and a very scrumptious piece of tarte aux pommes followed. As we drank our small cup of black coffee, we agreed that the meal was definitely not cuisine minceur. No, indeed! It was perfectly delicious. By the time we left, Madame had unbent enough to smile at us benevolently.
 
My mother was startled by the majesty of Chateau de Courtomer. The first time my husband brought me to see it, I too had been taken aback. I had wondered how we were going to feel about living in this vast pile, and before that ever came to pass, how on earth we were going to renovate it. But my mother took the entire project in stride.
 
She stood in the grand salon as the sun streamed into the Chateau through tall windows, striping the wooden parquet in tones of golden brown. 
 
“I could live here all by myself,” she pronounced.
 
I knew what she meant even before she elaborated. She had been a widow for more than a quarter of a century by then. She took her loneliness bravely, but she knew that light and gracefully arranged space – les belles volumes – lend themselves to the peace and stability of an inner life. Harmony in architecture brings harmony of mood.

The enfilade of spaces within the Chateau brings light to the interior of all the rooms.

We went to sit in the library, with light coming in from either side of the Chateau, and views out the windows of the park and the fields, the trees and the reddish Limousine cattle. I had a meeting with our farmer. My mother, who spent one of the happiest years of her young adulthood in Paris, observed our conversation. When it was over, she told me I’d done very well.
 
“You really listened,” she said, approvingly.
Monsieur Jean-Yves was concerned that hunters shooting at the crows that roosted in the pine trees of the cour d’entrée were disturbing our calving season. Although, of course, he had added, looking at me gravely, one had to accept that the crows were une peste terrible when it came to the young blades of wheat springing up in the fields. He and I both knew perfectly well that he liked to join in la chasse when it came to marauding foxes and boars, later in the year. I had promised I would speak to the chief of the chasseurs de la commune and reorganize the battues, or programmed hunts.
 
“Well, Mother,” I told her, “you know he wants le beurre et l’argent du beurre!” My mother smiled. It was not for nothing, she must have thought, that she had sent me to the Alliance Française to learn French at a tender age. Monsieur Jean-Yves wanted it both ways, “the butter and the money from selling the butter” -- an allusion, like many French adages, to the dilemmas posed by a farmer’s life,
We rounded up our day hanging pictures in the long hallways, arranging them in groups – plants, maps, engravings of castles and churches, portraits. Among her many qualities, my mother had an excellent eye for interior detail. Monsieur Xavier followed along admiringly, with a level and a tape measure to mark the exact position at which he would tap in the hooks.

Many years later, my mother recalled our afternoon at the Chateau.

“We did good work that day,” she said, looking up at me fondly from her bed. Her approval meant everything to me in those ultimate days.

My mother’s passport for travel to France in 1948

The Fête des mères, Mother’s Day, fell last Sunday in France. I was delighted to receive a bouquet and a dainty little box of chocolates from those for whom I, too, am a Maman chérie.

A few weeks ago, I held my own little grand-daughter in my arms, born on the 20th of April. Her dark blue eyes looked out at me with the immense calm of innocence – which in French means “non-knowledge.”

Little Charlotte has much to learn. We will look through leafy trees to the vast blue sky, taste buttery green beans, and talk about anxious cows and hungry crows. We’ll talk about her great-grandmother and hanging pictures on the wall.

On that note, and for all mothers and their children, here is a snippet from a short poem by the great Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame :

“Oh ! l’amour d’une mère ! amour que nul n’oublie !
Pain merveilleux qu’un Dieu partage et multiplie ! »

“A mother’s love, love never forgotten! 
Miraculous, like the bread
God shared and multiplied.”

Bonne fête à tous,

Elisabeth

                                   
P.S. Next week, we return to the gardens and landscape of the Chateau, a project gaining momentum as the cool spring days lengthen toward the summer solstice. We hope to have plenty of rain this year for our new plantings. As Monsieur Xavier reminded me Mai, en rosée abondant, réjouit le paysan. A rainy month of May brings good harvests.

A bientôt!