“Do we have enough ice?”
That is the question I have been asking over the past two months
Is our ice maker producing enough?
Do we need to make more?
I can bag some
Will we have enough for tonight?
Did you move some out of the way so it makes more?
Will there be enough for the cocktails?
Will there be enough for the Hydroflask refill?
Fixated on it
Like bird-dogging it
One thing I can sort of control
During these grief stricken days
During the paralyzing paroxysms
“Do we have enough ice?”
So stupid, too
While my fellow countrymen are in lines at food banks
While my fellow countrymen are applying for and failing to collect unemployment
While my fellow countrymen espouse conspiracy theories out of desperation to make sense of out of the desperate
While my fellow countrymen cling to memories of a world that made some sense three months ago
While my fellow countrymen rebel against authority and control
While my fellow countrymen do their parts to aid each other
While my fellow countrymen are stuck in quarantines
While my fellow countrymen’s hair wants cutting
While my fellow countrymen wonder from whence cometh their next meal
I stupidly ask that question
“Do we have enough ice? ”
While our collective house is on fire
Fire and Ice
As Mr. Frost once wrote
“….that for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice”
Do we have enough ice?
The three ladies with whom I live roll their eyes at me
“Stop, Dad”
“Yes, we do”
“What’s with you and the ice?”
It’s all I can ask
When I hear the familiar hiss of water into the molds in the ice maker, I smile
When I hear the crashing clank of ice landing on ice, I smile
The louder the noise, the less ice we have
I don’t care if it’s clear
I don’t care if it’s cloudy
Do we have enough ice?
Yes
We do
Hope you do, too
Dad, what's for supper? 
It means you’re human. Sometimes it’s those small & inconsequential things that take on an outsize presence,especially when they’re distracting from the daily horrors. The ice maker you can take in hand and bend to your will (or get a new fridge) but a deadly pandemic,not so much.
I’ve been grieving over the impending end of Lord & Taylor- so much history,the nation’s oldest department store,almost 200 yrs old,about to become another victim of COVID-19. But if I’m honest it was inevitable;genteel old establishments haven’t been in vogue for a long time- times change. Not always for the better I might add. Yet when there’s so much suffering as you so eloquently detailed …. it’s small beer indeed. Counting my blessings and trying to pass a few along. Glad to hear all is (relatively) well in the low country.
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You should read my earlier post about our lunch at Fred’s at Barney’s last October….
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