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Winter/Spring 2015

A Calm January Tuesday Morning in Park City by Nina Romano

 

A Calm January Tuesday Morning in Park City, Utah:
Wishing for South Florida Sunshine

The tech arrives to work on three TV’s, trying
his best to get us up and running before our kids arrive
within minutes in a rented van with baby-seats
and two young ones in tow from sunny south Florida.

Are they nuts? Are we, for asking them to hike out here?
The TV tech brings this situation: he parks his truck
and a gargantuan, moose cow with two calves
almost careen into truck and man, then saunter downhill

of our garden to cross the road into the neighbor’s garden.
Next, the Thermador tech arrives—just as the TV
guy hauls ass. Now the fridge-freezer guy, Dave,
swears (and so do I!) we bought a lemon.

He informs us the ice machine can’t be fixed as the radiator
that melts the ice for the defrost is shot. Translation:
begin defrosting the loaded-to-gills freezer for 24 hours.
We stack all the frozen food into two portable coolers

tightly packed. We stack these in the wine room at 55 degrees.
Hop in the truck and speed down Sackett toward Fresh Market,
to buy dry ice—we spot a neighbor, tell her our tale
of woe. She clues us her neighbor’s moving

and she’s sure we can use his freezer for two days
before the new folks move in. Two days later,
our friend Keith returns from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
He lets us transfer the foodstuffs to his freezer.

A barrel of laughs, may be a cliché—but say it—
irony dripping off your tongue, facetiously, and yes!
You got it! Ah! such wintertime fun, in a twenty below
Blizzard, snowbound weather, our kids and theirs.

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