The kitchen clock

There were thousands of objects in Margo's house, each containing its own story and sometimes the story of something else attached to it. For a while I knew every broom, pail, crucifix, cotton sheet, shelf, cushion, radio set, picture frame in that house. I knew where some of the dishes came from, three generations back, and which button had been ripped from what shirt and which won at a card game. I could find the worn aluminum spoon whose missing particles had attached themselves to the roofs of our palate over time. I knew where to store the soup pot and where to find the extra stick of butter.

I knew I had paid 70 francs for the kicthecn clock I purchased for Margo's birthday (the equivalent of about $10.00, an enormous sum it seemed to me in 1974). The clock bore the picture of an older woman making dinner. Even though the woman didn't look like her (she never wore her hair in a bun), Margo knew that the clock meant I lover her more than anything in the world. It was still easy to love her that way at thirteen.

She hung the clock on the wall above the kitchen cabinet. I would face it whenever I sat at the dining room table. Margo would sit in that same spot in the afternoons, sipping coffee and knitting, so that the clock would be held in our mutual gaze.

The sugar bowl

I have been using Margo's sugar bowl to store my necklaces. She would be appalled. For Margo, objects had precise functions that could not be changed.

She kept the sugar bowl in the cupboard above the stove, took it out for breakfast, lunch and afternoon coffee.

The afternoon coffee was for visitors: her sister, Gilberte every other Monday, and her sister-in-law, Jeanette, every other Tuesday. They would sit at the dining room table to sew or knit and share the family gossips. Margo would make coffee with milk and put out a dish of cookies on the table. She would pour two small glasses of liquor - cognac, grand-marnier, whatever was available - and they would sip the liquor and drink coffee for a few hours.

I would watch my grandmother's legs from my spot under the dining room table where she would send me to play. The table was like a small play house. I could set my red plastic tea set on the floor and play with my dolls there as long as I was careful not to step on toes.

At the appointed time, Margo would call me from under the table.
- "Do you want a 'canard'?" she'd ask.

She would dunk a sugar cube in her glass of liquor.
- "Eat it fast!"

The sugar felt warmer than usual. The liquor stung my throat. It wasn't the 'canard' I liked as much as the sight of the liquor rising in the sugar. How could liquid go up like that? If I held the sugar cube too long, it could crumble in the glass and Margo would get upset.

- "Look what you did," she'd say. "Now I have to drink it all."

And she would make a face at so much sugar in her mouth.