Making Jam

I crush quarts of raspberries into a red slurry that, when combined with sugar and pectin, will become a ripe berry, just picked, upon your tongue in mid-winter. Around Thanksgiving Day, or sometime in January, your eyes will be closed and your tongue caressing the thick sweetness slathered on a slice of warm bread. When you look up, raspberry vines pricking sweaty legs and arms, Japanese beetles crazy about mating and nothing else, and a plump red berry falling, will have joined you at table. You will long for July.