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.