How to Eat Pepper Jelly

Don’t touch it.
Cover your eyes.
Ask your Baba to feed it to you.

System devised entirely by Bella with no input from her grandmother.


Bella loves pepper jelly. I always have some for her when she visits, but last time she was with me, she had some pepper jelly on her fingers when she rubbed her eyes, and it stung so badly that it made her cry. Today as always she went straight to the fridge and pulled out the jar of pepper jelly as soon as her parents had left.

She refused to be robbed of joy by fear. There’s a hint for the rest of us.