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Imagine Being an Illegal Migrant Grape Picker April 12, 2013

It’s hard – it’s not just a moment’s sensations, it’s also an expectation of your past and future.  Maybe you can’t.  Try just to imagine the first day.  You’d have to find a place.  Maybe friends could take you, if they knew where you could pick without anyone minding about documents.  You’d turn up on some remote farm road on a cool sunny morning, when the grapes were dry enough to be picked easily.  Maybe your friends could help you find gloves and a pair of clippers.  If you’re lucky, the boss might have new clippers, figuring old ones would just jam up and slow you down.  You could fan out and start on your own row, but it would make sense to see how it’s done first, right?  You could pick across from one of your friends for a while.  Maybe he or she could help you figure out which ones were worth going for, or how to prune back the leaves if there were any in your way.  It could be pretty nice actually, since if you made your way across opposite sides of the same vine you’d have a lot of time to talk.  What would you talk about for hours, while your hands made little back-and-forth circuits, and your knees plunged alarmingly over and over?  Would you notice how your back started to hurt?  Would you learn to stand the right way, then, or keep at it?  And what about the sun, as it started to get higher?  What would it feel like later in the day, when the sore started to really settle in for a long homestay?

Now try to imagine the second day.