Sun Baked Raspberries

         In the summer, the individual plants of the raspberries always seem to merge into one long protective fence around our backyard. Their vines reach out across the empty space like desperate fingers and fill it with their intertwined stems and leaves, making it impossible to see which small red clusters of fruit have been born to which plants. They bear many of these clusters of little red shining balls, who all come together to be shaped like a rounded thimble that can be perfectly fitted onto the tip of a small finger. These little red berries do not, at first, have a very outgoing scent. Their sent is hinted at, but not revealed until squished between the fingers of a three-year-old’s dimpled hands.

         We sit at the picnic table, my sister and I, our short legs dangling above the grass as we swing them back and forth with the basket of fresh picked raspberries between us. I take each raspberry and look at it before I squish it slightly between my porcelain fingers, feeling the warm sunlight it captured pour out of the tiny red dots and run down into my palm making a small watery crimson pool. This action releases the stronger smell of something sweet and a little bit sour. As a small child I don’t take much time to appreciate this scent, the small sample it provides in smell is nothing like the full taste of the squished red berry that I quickly drop into my mouth. Once all the berries in our basket are eaten we lay in the cushions of grass with our hands resting upon our rounded bellies. There’s a remaining smell in the air of red stained fingers and of something sweet baking in the lowering sun.