Sugar

/ Jeff Cann

After our first two months of dating, Susan and I drove to Erie to meet her family. Her brother was home from college for winter break, and her sister came in for the weekend. The drive was rough. Susan and I spent three and a half hours creeping out of Washington DC in a heavy January snowstorm. We packed it in when we got to Breezewood, Pennsylvania. We spent Friday night in the cheapest motel we could find. Meeting her family would have to wait one more day. Given my nervousness, I can’t say I was disappointed.

Most of the weekend passed smoothly. I made no major gaffes around Susan’s family. My only clear memory comes from Sunday morning. Her mother asked me how I fixed my coffee. Being a bachelor, I stocked a minimalist refrigerator at home. I never got in the habit of keeping cream in my house. To take the edge off my coffee, I always used a teaspoon of sugar. I answered Jeanne: “Oh, just a little sugar please.”

You know in those sixties’ television shows where the frazzled housewife, brimming with frustration, blows her hair out of her eyes and counts to five? That was Jeanne. She set her face in an expression of stiff annoyance. She opened the cupboard, grabbed a two-pound bag of sugar, and thumped it hard on the counter. “Here’s your sugar.”

And I thought, “Wow, this relationship is going to be tough.”

But it never was. In that moment, I seemed to hit Jeanne’s one and only hot button. For the remainder of our twenty-eight-year friendship, she never once looked at me crosswise. Not when I published my memoir recounting years of mental illness and substance abuse. Not even when I read about it in front of all her friends and neighbors who came to my book launch. Jeanne never made me feel like I was anything but her best friend.

Jeanne and I laughed over the sugar incident countless times. I never knew what it was about my request that set her off, but it remains one of my fondest memories of her. It perfectly displays the stubbornness we all loved so much about her, and if nothing else, it highlights how great our relationship was ever after.

Note: When I read this story at Jeanne’s graveside ceremony, the gathered crowd universally agreed that sugar does not belong in coffee. I don’t know. I think it sometimes has its place. 

14 thoughts on “Sugar”

  1. A well-crafted micro-memoir. You take a moment that might easily be forgotten or missed and find siginficance in it. I enjoyed this.

    I didn’t know that sugar does not belong in coffee. (My favorite ice cream flavor is coffee, where coffee and sugar seem to blend nicely.)

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    • Well, just having spent the weekend with my kids and tasting their vanilla cream lattes, I can say unequivocally that coffee and sugar get along just fine. In fact, I said, ‘yum, that tastes just like coffee ice cream.’

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  3. My coffee was so bitter after putting cardamon in it this morning that I added sugar. As I drink, I lift the glass in a toast to Jeanne.
    Nice micro memoire, Jeff.

    Cheers to Jeanne.

    DD
    [Forgive any typos this morning – I woke with visual auras (migraine) and am autocorrecting frequently and with trepidation].

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    • You put spices in your coffee? That’s neat. Now that I’m back home, I’ll probably put sugar in my coffee tomorrow morning just to show “them.” Hope you’re feeling better.

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      • Yes, usually I have plain coffee grounds but I’ve wanted for cardamom recently. Try three or four seeds in a plunger or moka pot. Enjoy your sugar coffee, and remember to toast Jeanne. Cheers DD

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