“I can’t do it,” he said, crouching down low enough for his head to slump to his knees.
I sighed, dropping another strawberry into my box. At 6.5 years old, this is normal behavior for my son. The new normal, until it’s not. (I hope.) “OK,” I said. “We’ll keep picking, and you can just wait for us.”
My friend and I carried on with our task, pulling strawberries off the plants and adding them to the ever-growing mounds in our boxes. This is my fifth year picking strawberries, and I’m no slouch in the field. Even though it’s tough on the legs, it only takes 10 minutes or so to fill an 8-pound-capacity box.
Suddenly my son popped up, grabbed his box, and ran past me toward the end of the strawberry row. I smiled to myself, seeing that he had decided picking berries was much more fun than pouting and poking at the dirt, after all.
