How to Fry Dumplings

Don't fry the dumplings. Ask your wife, mother of four children and keeper of four more, to make the dumplings. She, along with your daughters, are the only ones who know how to cook. She will ask you what you want, and you will tell her, "Fry dumpling, saltfish, an' callaloo." Don't forget the callaloo.

You are bedridden and cannot move without help, so you can't watch her make breakfast in the kitchen. But you can picture her taking out the flour, salt, baking powder, and water. She will pour the water in little by little, mixing and forming dough with her hands. The wet dough will stick to her fingers until she adds more flour. She will knead the dough into a soft, firm glob the size of a boulder. She has many children. She will probably make more.

She will take out a pan and fill it with oil she bought from the market. She will turn on the cheap gas stove, then take out a chunk of saltfish. Have half a mind to call her, tell her to pick an ackee from the tree and cook that as well, but decide not to. You're in too much pain.

She will cut the saltfish into little shreds and put it in the hot oil. She will chop up onions, green onions and tomatoes, and add it in later. She will take out the callaloo and boil it in another pan with salted water. Your children hate callaloo, but eat it anyway. Anyone who wastes food will get the belt for their own beating.

Your wife will take small chunks of the dough apart, roll them into flat circles, then put them in a third pan full of hot oil one at a time. She will not lose track of the other things. She will do this until the boulder of dough becomes a mound, then a stone. Somewhere in between, she will take off her slipper, and kill the cockroach hiding in the corner with one good slap.

When everything is finished, your wife will bring you a plate of food. Everyone else will eat at the table. The dumplings will be crisp, the saltfish seasoned well, and the callaloo will be soft. Your son Gary, your son Andrew, and their friends will stop to eat before going to work. Your daughter Fiona is here, and she has your granddaughter in tow. The house will smell of dumplings and family.

This will repeat every weekend, with different foods, for the next four years. You will do many things for the last time. You'll look your granddaughter in the eye and smile after she tells you, in her little pink dress and little blue voice, that one day she'll be a doctor so she can make you feel better. You'll know that you'll never grow old enough to see that happen. You will wither into a trampled plant clinging to life, but your smile will not fade when your granddaughter looks at you.

Now die, and leave them all behind. Don't worry. Your granddaughter knows how to make fry dumplings.

Alyssa Pringle (she/her) is a first-year college student full of words and willing to share them. From Jamaica originally, Alyssa moved to California at the age of nine. Her favorite breakfast is, and forever shall be, fried dumplings.

How to Make Chicken Spaghetti

Your grandchildren look forward to your chicken spaghetti when they visit. They won’t be there until evening, but you’ll serve dinner at 2:00 as usual. Your husband will come home then, and at least one of your sons, and who knew who else might drop by, hungry. You are used to making enough for the neighborhood.

Use the large black roasting pan and a package of chicken parts, even though you can break down a whole chicken. You can, in fact, dress a chicken. After the war, when you lived in Washington, DC and drove a surplus Army jeep, your new husband brought a freshly slaughtered chicken home from the market. You told him that the next time he bought a chicken like that, he was cleaning it himself.

Add celery, poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper and water. Simmer, covered, until the chicken is tender.

While the chicken is cooking, squeeze lemons for lemonade and mix it in the stainless pitcher. Pour some into a small Dixie cup from the dispenser by the sink and taste it. Add more sugar.

The author’s grandmother, culinary maven and connoisseur of sweet lemonade.

Remove the chicken and celery and cook the spaghetti in the broth. Shred the chicken and add it, diced green pepper and onion, a can of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and chili powder. Decades from now, your granddaughter will ask you to write down the recipe. Cook it with her instead. She’ll get a small Dixie cup to taste the lemonade, and add more sugar.

-Jacqueline Bryant Campbell

How to Buy a Suit and Tie

Take your daughter with you. Shopping is better with company.

When the salesman asks what you are looking for, tell him you need a suit for your father, and everything he has is much too big now. Navy blue, not black. You want your father to look good, but nothing designer; you can almost hear him protesting such an extravagance.

The author’s father, William Bryant, Jr (left) with his father, William Bryant, Sr in 2000.

Compare fabrics. Check the linings. Smooth the lapels. The salesman will narrow your choices to three suits. He will ask what the occasion is, hoping to be helpful.

Tell him it’s for a burial.

Don’t tell him that your father died a month after a 12-hour surgery for pancreatic cancer that he never woke from. That it was the same surgery you had just four months earlier. That you were cancer-free. That your surgery was performed by the doctor who pioneered it, but your father was too frail to travel that far. That your choices were to do nothing and watch the cancer kill him or attempt this surgery that might kill him. That you knew in any case that you would be in a department store buying your father’s last suit.

Breathe. Accept the salesman’s condolences. Choose a suit. Squeeze your daughter’s shoulder and have her select a tie. Play Earth, Wind, and Fire loudly on the car ride home.

In eighteen months, when your cancer returns and is in your lungs and liver and they tell you it is inoperable, select your own suit and tie.

-Jacqueline Bryant Campbell

How to Stop Your Little Sister from Being a Brat

When it’s almost dinnertime, come upstairs from the basement, which is also your bedroom. You co-opted it when you were sixteen, tired of sharing a room with your brothers. You didn’t ask permission but your mother didn’t argue. No one ever argues with you. You’re the man of the house.

Your mother is still making dinner, so go to the living room, where four of your five siblings are watching TV.

Lie on the floor on your side, elbow bent, hand cupping your head.

Your youngest sister, 9 years younger than you, comes down the steps and goes into the dining room. The keyboard cover thuds open as she sits down at the piano.

Everyone groans as she begins to hammer on the keys. The others yell to your mother, but you know she will never take their side. Practicing the piano will always take precedence over the TV.

You lean forward and turn the volume on the TV all the way down. Sitting up, you put your finger to your lips and your brothers and sisters stop yelling. Their curiosity is evident.

You call out to your sister.

"Denise?"

"WHAT!?!"

"Why don't you come in and watch TV with us? We'd love to have you!"

You hear her laugh. You hear the thud of the keyboard cover as she shuts it. You turn the volume back up.

The author’s brother, Kevin

-Denise McDonald still has the upright piano that she learned to play as a child. It sounds a little funky, but that might be her. She lives near the beach in NJ with her husband. She is not on Facebook but she is on Instagram. One of these days, she's going to get herself a website.

Making Ralston

First, get down the big four-quart pot.
Set the stool just right,
so you can sit and ease your back,
reach across to the stove,
and yet be free to gaze out the window
across the fields of sugar beet
to the endless prairie.
You’ve already stoked the stove with wood,
but for making Ralston,
you prefer the steady gas flame
of your new combination Kalamazoo range.
You’ll have to sit there awhile
stirring, so the pot doesn’t boil over.

The author’s grandmother, Helen Larson, indulging in another favourite activity; quilting.

Start with two-thirds of a cup of molasses.
Sorghum will do,
but Karo syrup is too sickly sweet.
Avoid it. It needs to be bitter,
dark, a reminder
that the sweet is hard-won.
Add one-third cup of whole milk
from the dairy cow in the barn.
Set aside the rest
to make ice cream
for after dinner.
As the molasses starts to thin,
add brown sugar and bitter chocolate,
a quarter pound of butter.
You can eye the weight
without thinking twice.
Stir the mixture constantly.
If you get distracted—
say, by the sight of your young husband
Coming in for lunch across the fields—
the candy will foam up all over
your shiny new stove.
Keep stirring until
a spoonful dropped into a dish of water
forms a soft ball.
If the ball is hard and cracks,
you’ve cooked it too long.
Prepare the baking sheet
with a piece of waxed paper
and pour the liquid mass
out to cool. Add black walnuts
if you have some.
When it cools, break it into pieces
and wrap each one.
When George heads back to the fields after lunch,
he’ll take a piece for his pocket,
pop one into his mouth.
His kiss will be bitter,
but it will hold you up till sundown.

The author’s grandmother, Helen, and distracting grandfather, George.

Someday your granddaughters
will use Ralston as a test
to weed out the boys who aren’t serious,
the ones who don’t know
that sometimes,
the bitter is the sweet.

-Olive L. Sullivan performs with the band Amanita. She holds an MFA in creative writing and her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, including A Room of One's Own, The Midwest Quarterly, and The LIttle Balkans Review. Her collection Wandering Bone (Meadowlark Books) was published in 2017 while she was in the hospital recovering from a bone marrow transplant. She enjoys fly fishing, long walks on the prairie with dogs, and travel anywhere that requires a passport.

How to Eat a Spam Sandwich

Your husband is out at the bar again. The house is clean. You’re hungry, but the pantry is empty.

Grandma Ruth and Aunt Madeline

Clip on your best earrings. You love a good piece of jewelry, even of the costume variety. Apply some red lipstick. Spritz some floral perfume. Slip into your trench coat and pearl-dotted gloves.

It may only be Toledo, and it may only be the grocery store, but you never know. Elvis could make an appearance in produce.

Plus, even when money is scarce, it’s important to always look your best.

Begin your one-mile walk downtown.

At Tiedtke’s, add Spam, Kraft American Cheese, and Wonder Bread to your cart. Pay with change from your pocketbook.

Head home, sandwich ingredients in hand.

Once there, open your bag of bread and can of meat. Add slices of each straight to a warmed skillet with a bit of butter. Let your ingredients sizzle and brown before flipping. While it’s cooking, place a piece of cheese on top of one piece of bread. After both sides of bread and meat are cooked, smoosh the slices of toast together around the Spam. Open a can of peaches for dessert. Leave your dishes. Maybe on purpose.

Apply rouge and settle down to watch the latest wrestling match. It’s scripted, but you still love watching muscly men like Buddy Rogers duke it out in the ring. Take your first bite, savor it before your husband returns, blitzed and ready to argue about a woman's place.

- Danielle Dayney was born and raised in Ohio, and got her start writing rock concert reviews for a Toledo-based music magazine, The Glass Eye. Today, her work has appeared in the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, online at Huffington Post, Dead Housekeeping and The Mindful Word, and in several anthologies. These days, you can find her chasing her kids and furbabies somewhere in the rolling hills of Virginia, or online at https://danielledayney.com. Her book is forthcoming from Brandylane Publishers in 2021.

Brothers and Barrettes

Show up. Like, just knock on the door. She’s your sister. She has to feed you, so she does. Butter noodles. Her apartment is gross and you say so. Little one, you’re no better than me. She’s surprised to see you, and sad. Not for you, but in general. She hasn’t talked to dad.

The author with her brother in the pool in a moment of joy

You bring her barrettes you beaded in rehab. They’re delicate, the cheap thread that holds the beads together tenuous like your sibling bond. You sit on opposite sides of the futon while she nudges one into her coarse hair. It looks stupid. You say so. That looks stupid. You should do it like this. You scoot over, your crooked fingers, broken and rebroken and healed without care, braid a fat plait on the side of her face, but it still looks bad, and they won’t last, anyway. Sorry.

You go before she wakes up, and don’t leave a note. You take some things: her driver’s license and a jar of peanut butter. She’s using dad’s old munitions trunk as a coffee table. Sweep it clear of the school books and papers with one broad stroke of your arm and leave the barrettes alone on the top in a neat equal sign.

-Stefanie Le Jeunesse

Learn to Accessorize

Men are lovely adornments, Puddin’. They make life sexier, sweeter, richer sometimes. But you can have an outfit without the earrings and you can have a life without a man.

Change them like you change clothes. Let the men come and go. Swap them out like last year’s castoffs. Why make one permanent when having variety is so much more fun?

The 6’4” “yella” pseudo-thug? He isn’t going anywhere with his life and you don’t need to carry no man on your back.

The smooth talking singer with the Napoleon complex? He thinks his military service means he can treat you like a private to his General.

The one with the colored contacts? What were you thinking with that one, Pud?

The country boy with an accent that drips like melted butter? I know his grandmother was somebody special but he ain’t never seemed like much to me.

The one you married? You only needed him to bring your baby here.

There’s no man alive smart enough to tell you how to be a woman. And none worthy enough to stay with you while you figure it out, not even your husband.

I know you want to be a princess, Puddin’, but you don’t need a man to choose you.

You ain’t Cinderella. The shoe doesn’t fit. There’s better things to be than a princess and the best thing to be is – free.

The author, aged around 1, with her glamorous maternal grandmother, her “Geez”

-Toya R. Smith is a mother, a daughter, a sister, a Titi, a Black girl from West Baltimore. An Aborisha, a Blitch, a Conjurewoman. More than anything, she is a curator of joy.

How To Feed The Yellow Cat

Sneak out the back door. Load the shotgun, then tromp through the cottonwoods, past the barn. Look for jackrabbits, but don’t be too picky; cottontails are fine.

Get at least three rabbits, maybe four, if winter’s almost spent. Never hunt for cat food in the warm months, those without an “R” in their name. July hares likely harbor worms.

Dress the rabbits meticulously. Remove every fragment of buckshot. Use tweezers to pluck the deep bits—take no chances with Yellow Cat’s brittle old teeth.

Line up a row of baggies. Portion the meat, bite-size pieces only. Deposit the baggies in the freezer, but save the best tidbits for later.

Reassure the wife that, of course, it’s all jackrabbit meat; no cottontails in the lot. Project sincerity, especially when her glare stings. Nod when she hectors about her Siamese’s more civilized digestion.

Charles, the feeder of Yellow Cat, with his wife, June

Mollify by helping with the supper dishes. Stack the plastic plates in the pantry, on the shelf above her cat’s store-bought food. Squint at the tuna-flavored scourge and commiserate with the melancholy Siamese. When no one’s looking, loosen his black velvet collar.

Escape the kitchen. Take Yellow Cat’s china dish to the back step. Wait for him to slink out of the shadows, then scratch his ears while he eats. Bask in his ragged purring and kneading claws.

Later, smuggle the last morsel of fresh meat into the Siamese’s crystal dish. Grin, because the taste of shared rebellion is sweet.

- Myna Chang writes short stories in a variety of genres. Her work has been featured in the Akashic Books flash series. She holds B.S. and M.A. degrees in communication. See more at mynachang.com.

Disassociation Dessert

Wait until the older kids are at school and the youngest is taking a nap with the bedroom door closed. Then make your chocolate sauce in secret. In the blender, add one half cup of sugar, one half cup of powdered milk, four tablespoons of cocoa, and four tablespoons and one teaspoon of hot water. Blend on high for thirty seconds. Scrape down the sides. Give it ninety seconds more at high speed.

The author’s industrious mother in her kitchen

Grab a spoon from the drawer and eat the whole batch of chocolate sauce sitting at the kitchen table. Don’t bother with a bowl, there are enough dishes to wash and laundry to fold. You should probably clean the bathroom too, but it can wait.

Each taste of the rich smooth chocolate melts it all away: your husband’s yelling, your kids’ demands, the complete lack of intellectual stimulation of being a housewife with four kids. You wanted this. You sigh and savor another bite.

Sometimes you mix this up on steamy summer nights to dollop over ice cream for the whole family, dessert for a dinner of popcorn when it is just too hot to cook.

Years later, when your younger daughter asks you for the recipe, stall her, make excuses, refuse to write it down. Finally relent and tell her what to write on the recipe card.

She will prepare it once for her children. Then she’ll file it away and never make it again.

- Margaret Shafer writes on two acres surrounded by cornfields in the Midwest. You can read her stories about life, her travels and general thoughts about the world at unfoldingfromthefog.wordpress.com.

How to Host a Guest

You apologize to your guest for the weather, the ice storm that has coated the sidewalks in your crowded Stockholm neighborhood. You apologize that it gets dark so early, but add tomorrow will be sunny and warm.

You apologize for the size of your apartment, though in truth it is like something out of a movie. The kind of place a young, successful woman would live, decorated with the same sense of style that marks your wardrobe. You favor the classics, but some audacious pieces from Vivienne Westwood hang in the closet. You have visited Westwood’s studio, and count celebrities among your friends, a diverse collection of individuals in cities and towns around the world. They marvel at how your life seems so constantly in motion, a shutter-fast series of work projects and ideas, destinations and time zones, captured colorfully on Instagram.

The author's favorite photo of his friend Carolina.

But then there is you at home, apologizing for the lack of space, insisting on sleeping on a roll-up mattress in the living room, giving your guest the bedroom. You make your bed up simply, your laptop perched on the coffee table because you will start working after just a few hours sleep.

After the accident takes you away, this is what your guest remembers. After the clothes are packed away. After he hears the apartment has been sold. He remembers talking well into the night, and he remembers you apologizing, in advance, if you accidentally wake him in the morning. 

- T. (Tom) Cashman Avila-Beck is a frustrated creative who lives in Bangor, Maine, where he sometimes gives tourists incorrect directions to Stephen King’s house. Not on purpose, he just has a horrible sense of direction. 

Bread for the Birds

Bread and water – two things we cannot do without in life. Let’s make bread: white, wheat, oatmeal, even pumpernickel with a hint of chocolate, or rye with the bitter touch of caraway.

Stir together the flour, water, salt, oil. Whatever else it calls for. Check your recipe, mix, knead, let it rise.

Punch it down, shape it, bake it. See, I have it all written down for the different kinds right here.

Then set out the butter and the strawberry jam. They’ll always eat their fill.

Sometimes you make so much that even after everyone eats it for several days (toast for breakfast, ham sandwiches for lunch, butter-bread with soup for supper) the last pieces go stale. Then it sits on the counter, a few slices in a bag until, finally, there’s a little spot of mold on the last piece.

You might be inclined to throw that last slice away when it turns green. But don’t do it. One must never throw away bread or waste water. Bread is the staff of life. Never forget that. And never throw away even that slice of days-old bread that cannot be toasted or rejuvenated as bread pudding. Put it out for the birds, but never ever throw it in the trash.

We waste too much these days. We really must be more careful.

The author's grandmother (at center) saved bread for the birds, and taught her daughter to do the same.

- Hope Nisly is Acquisitions Librarian at Fresno Pacific University and a writer who lives in Reedley, California where she still tries to cut down on what she throws away. Her writing has been published in Mojave River Review, Fredericksburg Literary and Arts Review, The Esthetic Apostle, and DreamSeeker Magazine. Her stories have aired on Valley Writers Read, a program of the local NPR-affiliate radio station.

How to Store Seashells

Before you store your seashells, you must first walk along Miami Beach at sunrise with your throat still burning from last night’s margaritas. This is before marrying, having children or growing up. Along the wet sand, collect sand dollars, pointy mitres, ridgy scallops and, your favorite, oversized conch shells. Pack them in your suitcase between your swimsuits and terry-cloth jumpsuits and bring them back to Ohio.

In time, get married. Have one child. Get divorced and married again, always hanging on to those shells. They remind you of who you were before: young and wild.

When your father falls ill, pick up your family of three and move everything that fits into his duplex. Take care of him as best you can. He’s dying, but you won’t admit it. 

Display the shells on a shelf in your six-year-old daughter’s room, because wall space is scarce. She likes them, to shake the sand dollars and imagine real coins inside. When your dad’s health sinks further, hand her the conch and tell her to listen to the ocean. Tell her stories about the beach and how one day, when money and life are better, you will take her there to find her own seashells.

One day she climbs her dresser to play with the shells and bumps the shelf. It topples. Shards of shells ricochet off walls. 

The conch is somehow okay. 

Hold it to your ear. Know not everything is broken.

- Danielle Dayney is sometimes a blogger, usually a writer, and always a mom. Recently, her creative nonfiction essays have been shared on BLUNTmoms and Thought Catalog. Her stories have also been published in several anthologies including the Virginia Writers Centennial Anthology, Short on Sugar, High on Honey, Nevertheless We Persisted, andBeach Reads: Lost and Found.In 2016 and 2017, she received awards at BlogHer for creative nonfiction essays. You can find her chasing kids and furbabies somewhere in Virginia, or at www.danielledayney.com.

The Dolly's Dress

Always make it a pair. When buying a bra, get the matching panty. When sewing a dress for a little girl, make one for her dolly, too.

Mom sat quietly in front of the sewing machine, the lamp shining brightly over her shoulder onto the tiny dress she held on her lap. A matching one, only slightly larger, already hung in a little girl’s closet, far away in Australia. 

Mom turned the dolly’s dress inside out to inspect the waistline seam she had just sewn. She frowned and slowly pulled out each little stitch: something wasn’t right. This was for her first granddaughter. The dolly dress must match the girl’s dress perfectly.

Mom, Isabel, dress. Photo by Karen Dean.

My own sewing lessons ended abruptly years ago when I broke a fourth needle. Mom had, however, successfully taught me the satisfication of sewing—precision—particularly when attaching a full skirt to a fitted bodice. Each stitch must take in more fabric from the skirt than from the bodice, but it must do so invisibly. Begin by pinning the side seams to one another, then pin the center and the back of the skirt. Do not sew. A gathered seam must first be basted. Cut a long section of cheap thread and sew it first by hand. Squish, push, squeeze the fabric. Do not fold it: we are gathering, not pleating. 

Once the dress was finished, she hung it on a tiny hanger next to her sewing machine, anticipating the dolly’s next visit. Mom refused to mail the dress, preferring to gift it in person so she could savor the delight it would elicit. 

As the months passed, though, her cancer progressed. She could hardly walk by the time the little girl arrived, but in the middle of the international arrivals lounge, next to the luggage carousel, dolly was stripped and joyfully transformed into something quite perfect.

- After her mother’s death, Jerilyn Sambrooke took a renewed interest in sewing but has yet to master the fine art of a gathered skirt. Jerilyn currently lectures in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also working on a memoir, Alpenglow: A Year of Darkness, that narrates the year following her mother’s death. Her reflections on grief owe much to her academic research on religious practice and secular life in contemporary fiction.

Take Your Granddaughter on a Road Trip

When you drive out to the Midwest to see your eldest son and his small family, there is no one to rotate the beers for the nine hours. But on the way back, you will have your 8-year-old granddaughter with you, and she is a good girl.

Put the granddaughter and a big metal cooler full of Schlitz cans and ice in the back seat. Show the girl how to rotate the cans whenever she hands you a fresh beer as you drive. Each can has to be turned and buried deeper in the melting ice so the beer is icy and refreshing whenever you crack open a new one. Her hand reaches up to give you a wet, ice-chilled beer as you chuck the empty out the window. You don’t ask her to open them. Her fingers are too small.

The author and her Pappap

Smoke three Camel non-filtered cigarettes while you drink each beer, flicking the ash out the window, which is left permanently cracked. Light the next Camel off of the last one. Your wife, in the passenger seat, and granddaughter, sing songs while you hum tunelessly along and crack jokes about the road signs.

“Hey, why do you have to watch out for Falling Rock? She was an Indian Princess who ran away from home and her old man is looking for her!”, and laugh your wheezy, boozy laugh when your granddaughter groans that she has heard that one a thousand times.

When she asks, tell the girl all of the stories about all of the tattoos that cover your arms and legs.

“I got ‘em in the Navy. This one is the Fightin’ Irish! This one is your Grandma’s name, because she’s my Irish Rose.” Let the girl rub her fingers up and down your right arm, feeling the ridges of the tattoos.

Ask her for another cold one.

- Beth Dugan's previous essays for Dead Housekeeping are Blue and Grey and Brown, Evergreen, and Everything Can be Used Again. Her website is www.bethdugan.com.

How To Remodel

Start with the perfect cobalt blue farmers sink, on sale at Lowe’s. It’s too big for your kitchen, but that doesn’t matter, you bought this house for its potential. Set the sink in the middle of the kitchen floor where the tiles are missing because you plan to install a mosaic there, and start ripping out cabinets. Replace the bronze drawer pulls with blue glass knobs.

Do the dishes in the tub while the kitchen is torn up. It’s not that bad, even if your joints ache every time you kneel down and your back threatens to seize. Take a hot bath after the dishes are clean.

Buy new appliances (also on sale at Lowe’s). Store them in the garage; the kitchen cabinets are still half dismantled, sheets of one-inch tiles laid loosely over the plywood, and that beautiful sink is still on the floor because you need to replumb. Walk around it for the next ten years every time you move from the fridge to the microwave. 

When your lungs are too crowded with smoke to swing a hammer, hire your boyfriend-slash-handyman, who is slow but cheap and does really excellent work when he is sober. When he isn’t sober, lock the door but don’t call the cops, because really he just needs a break. He didn’t mean to set fire to your hair that time. It was an accident. He apologized, later. He started to build shelves in your bedroom.

Buy him tools, a coffeepot, a KitchenAid. Maybe he’ll stay clean now that somebody is taking care of him. And when you do call the cops, that night he is banging on your door and will not leave, that night he stabs the bartender downtown because you wouldn’t let him in, write a letter, telling the judge he’s getting better, he’s not perfect but he’s got such potential.

Take the doors off the cabinets. Line the open shelves with beautiful blue jars full of pasta and beans, flour and sugar and coffee. That sink will look so nice, when the kitchen is fixed up.

The author and her mother

- Christine Hanolsy is a writer from Portland, Oregon. She serves on the editorial staff of the online writing community YeahWrite, where her primary portfolio includes microprose, flash fiction, and poetry. She was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year recipient and community keynote speaker for her essay Rights and Privileges. Her short fiction has been published in print by MidnightSun Publishing and online by Enchanted Conversation; other pieces appear on her blog, Trudging Through Fog. She is currently revising her first novel, which she co-authored with fellow YeahWrite editor and Dead Housekeeping contributor Rowan Becket Grigsby.

How to Pierce Your Granddaughter's Ears

Ask your granddaughter to wait until she is ten.

When the time comes, seek the consent of her mother, your hard-working daughter-in-law.

Pull out the thinnest needle, cotton thread, and a lump of beeswax from your sundry box. Rub wax on the thread to make it strong and then run it through the needle’s eye. Hold the needle in the flame of a candle to sterilize it.

Sit the ten-year-old on a stool in the breeze of your table fan. Tie up her hair and dot each delicate earlobe with your ballpoint pen. Give her candy to suck on.

Place your pet parrot on the girl’s arm and teach it some tunes. Let her feed it hot peppers to sharpen its tongue.

While whistling a tune, push the needle quickly and smoothly in with your right hand, stretching the lobe with the left. Cut the thread and tie its ends while blowing on the red lobe.

“Bahadur girl. Bewaqoof parrot.” Let your roaring laughter drown the pain.

Repeat.

The author's grandfather immaculately dressed

Each month, dress up and trim your beard for going to the bank for your pension. Your granddaughters will ask you to get laddoos. 

Save ten rupees each month per girl for gold earrings—60 rupees in total.

Gold is on a rise but your life isn’t. Only two of the six have gold in their ears when you die.

You cannot fill all the holes in one lifetime.

- Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American. She was born in a middle-class family in India and will forever be indebted to her parents for educating her beyond their means. She now lives in the United States. Her life is blessed with plenitude but she is oceans away from her family. That pain makes her write and express herself. Her work has been published in Ms Magazine blog, The Same, The Aerogram, The Sidereal, Star 82 Review among others. She blogs at PunyFingers.

Abuela's Special Vegetable Soup

Chunky vegetable soup at your house was a treat.  The fun began when you started to prepare the vegetables. I was the happy recipient of your discarded strips of potato and carrot peel, celery ribs, fennel stalks. Butter knife in hand, I set to work industriously in the covered patio outside your kitchen.

We both chopped, sliced, and stirred in unison, you at the kitchen counter; me, at a picnic table, listening to your crystalline voice. You always loved to sing.

Abuela in her garden

You brought your soup to the table with a radiant smile. My pretend soup ended up in the trash. 

You didn’t complain if your 11 grandchildren made a mess, but you never tolerated rude language. “¡Te voy a poner una papa caliente en la boca!” The threat of a hot potato in our mouths was an effective deterrent.

Years later, when it was time for me to make soup for real, I asked you what made your soup taste so special. Your green eyes twinkled and you settled down for a chat, matecup in hand. The secret ingredient included flavors from the land of your ancestors, Spain.  

“Mix a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a heaped tablespoon of smoked paprika and heat over a low fire until the paprika dissolves,” you said. The paprika imparts a smoky yet subtle flavor. “Make sure you don’t burn it, or it’ll taste bitter. Then trickle this infused oil on the soup.” 

These orangey-red pools of oil carry flavor, family traditions and childhood memories. 

- Ana Astri-O’Reilly is a fully bilingual Spanish-English travel blogger and writer originally from Argentina. She now lives in Dallas, USA, with her husband. Besides writing on her travel blogs, Ana Travels and Apuntes Ideas Imagenes, Ana has published travel and food articles in a variety of outlets as well. She likes to eat good food, read good books and play tennis (she’s a beast at the net!)    

How to Create a Life You Want in the Wrong Place

Begin early in your arranged marriage to your farmer. Sprinkle a little bit of soda, literally on top of the newly growing corn stalk, ruining the whole row, but not the field, before he stops you. Misunderstanding the difference between sprinkling around and on turns out to be just the thing to ensure you’re put out of the fields forever.

Now the kitchen is your domain. Be sure to always have cornbread cooked and greens simmering in the pot in case time gets away from you. Pile high all of your books, various versions of the Bible for cross-referencing, sheet music you never use, several years of yellow pages, cookbooks full of recipes you can’t get the ingredients for, and cartons of cigarettes. All balanced in precarious columns. Spend moments between preparing meals ordering items you don’t have the money or space for.

Granny Deen on her back porch

Find relief out of the hot kitchen by spending afternoons on the back porch reading and smoking, or playing melodies you heard on the radio, by ear and without sheet music, on the tiny upright piano you convinced your husband to buy. It entertains your children and the neighbors through the porch screen.

Make sure to do all of this in your house dress, bra off and no shoes, because none ever fit just right. As you’re rocking and reading on the porch, be sure to make notes in the margins of your thoughts and reactions, even in the Bible. Feel secure that they will always see your thoughts scribbled around passages, like a frame. Who would throw out a Bible? Surely, not your children. 

- Leah Rosa O'Donnell is a native New Orleanian and Licensed Professional Counselor. She remains fascinated with observing people and occasionally writes about what she sees. 

How to Get Your Grandchildren Ready for Church

It’s a little easier, but not by much, if the children’s parents also spent the night before Sunday service, but for the mornings you are alone preparing anywhere from five to seven grandkids for church:

Wake up the two girls first. Give the sisters a little privacy as they pick out their toothbrushes from the bathroom collection. Invite them to the table as you finish your coffee. Remind them to bring what they need for their hair. No, not on the kitchen table. Coffee table is fine. Make sure it’s blue Ultra Sheen for extra shine.

Corral the boys. The girls are savoring perfectly toasted bread spread with real butter. They fantasize about the day they will be old enough to be offered a pour from the percolator. Shout the wrong names at all the boys until they get it together enough to sit at the table for scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice. Inspect all their haircuts. Giggle to yourself remembering the edge ups their grandfather had given them the night before: Lord, how that Tony screamed, then, with tears drying in his eyes, reassured his brother in the chair that it doesn’t hurt. It don't hurt, Andy. That Tony, oh boy, that Tony.

Style the girls’ hair and here comes their favorite part: picking out the hair ribbons that match their dresses. Clip barrettes to the ends of their ponytails, pin a bright bow to their pigtails. Inspect their knees for ash.

Cry out for the industrial-sized lotion bottle and attack those ashy knees. Pile everyone into the Lincoln after carefully wrapping their offering coins into embroidered handkerchiefs. Arrange those beautiful black children in a row on your regular pew. Sorry, Sister Campbell, my grands are visiting and they are taking your seat. Pass down to each a hard butterscotch candy and a final warning hush. The service is beginning.

This custom doll by Jacqueline Bryant Campbell wears a dress made from the author’s daughter’s baptismal gown.

- Erica Hoskins Mullenix is a freelance writer and editor, and a contributing editor here at Dead Housekeeping. Besides personal essays detailing her life as an introverted middle kid, bewildered but kickass mother and special needs parent, she also writes short fiction. Proudly an alum of Howard University in Washington, D.C., Erica created the online writer’s community known as yeah write in April 2011. She has had essays published in Salon, The Houston Chronicle, PANK, and other print and online publications. Her fiction and other writing can be found on her personal blog. Follow Erica on Twitter @freefringes

- Jacqueline Bryant Campbell is a contributing editor at Dead Housekeeping, and you can admire and order her dolls at her shop, Jacq's Dolls.