Summer

Just as my mom forced my brother and me to do every summer, I take my daughter, Thalia, wild blackberry picking. There was a big patch of brambles just up the hill from our house in Georgia (I imagine that wherever we live I’ll be able to find a wild berry patch of some sort). We’d get started early in the morning to sneak in and out before the heat overtook us and rendered us—well, me—completely incapable of any physical activity that didn’t involve water hoses, but the patch was situated on top of a hill and we could never realistically get there before it was in full sun. We’d wear long sleeves, long pants, tall boots, scarves around our hair, and gloves (though the gloves came off soon enough; they always seemed like a good idea but just end up getting in the way).