Image in rear view mirror When I close my eyes, for seconds we are Thelma and Louise rounding treacherous mountain curves but not running from anything or to anything, just two girls on the go. Sisters.

Truth is, the curves are more beautiful than treacherous, and the only approximation to Thelma and Louise is a convertible, but it's not even teal.  Top down, wind slapping my face, my hair Medusa wild.  I inhale deeply, having learned to sense the extra in the ordinary.  We're on our way to pick up lunch and pick raspberries.  

We remember moments, right?  Glimpses.  Snapshots.  Here then gone, but forever held tightly in clamped fist.

Nobody loves me like my sister, and it is because of that I feel like I've failed my daughter in some way; she has brothers.  Only sisters will completely understand that.

Goats on a roof We pass Goats on a Roof.  It's a Southern train wreck and my neck turns to rubber.  She indulges me and stops, because, really Goats on a Roof?!  She waits patiently while I take picture after cell phone picture of those goats on a roof. 

Until I'm gorged and we move on to the next feast.  Raspberries.

Why I've never gone berry pickin' is beyond me but she intends to remedy that.  They're $2.00 a pint, the honor system, and something about that blesses my heart.  Restores my faith in man.  Makes me happy I'm Southern.

The bushes look bare so berry pickin' becomes a treasure hunt….  With familiar green pint basket in hand, we scour each row.  She squeals with every find, sampling first fruits to make sure they're worthy.  "This is a taste of heaven!" or "That one just melted in my mouth!" and for some reason I think Anne of Green Gables, not that I remember her ever picking raspberries.

Guileless and spontaneous, my sister's enthusiasm compels me to look beyond the sweat searing my clothes as second skin, to ignore the knee-high weeds lashing with each step, to brush away the gnats and the flies and the stinging creatures that normally would send me running.  

She bosses.  "Only pick the biggest, juiciest ones."  "If they're too red, they're too ripe."  "Don't you post that picture unless I look skinny in it."  She can't help but tell me what to do, she's been at it since I exited my mother's womb.

"Are you going to write about The Divine Pickin' of the Raspberries?" she asks and I tell her maybe.

Which only sometimes means "Yes."

Picking raspberries in the North Georgia mountains

 

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