Tomorrow Ice
Tomorrow Ice
Ice Aware
December 14, 2021
Snow Job
Annalee Birdcount opens up the freezer in her parent’s basement and smiles.
“Hello, O’Sullivan.”
And O’Sullivan smiles back. As he always does.
Annalee and her sister Willow built O’Sullivan on a drunken Christmas night six years ago. Before the pandemic, before Trump, before half of America showed the other half of America just how scared it is.
And O’Sullivan, who is only about a foot tall and is basically more ice than snow now, has never stopped smiling. His button eyes, his bottle top mouth. He spends most of the year entombed here in the basement, a vestige of a better time.
But each year, usually about two weeks before Christmas, the Birdcount girls liberate O’Sullivan and place their frozen friend in his rightful place, in the backyard by the tallest pine tree. And there he sits, watching the world go by, listening to Christmas music, feeling the winter cold. Home. Until February.
But this year it’s too warm. It’s December 14 and there has still not been any measurable snowfall. And the temperatures have reached the 60s.
The world is warm. And scary.
Annalee takes long slug of her beer and smiles and winks at O’Sullivan.
“Maybe next week, buddy,” she says, and closes the freezer.
Annalee sits on the couch and drinks her beer and turns on the TV. There is a news report of a polar bear. A very skinny polar bear. He’s swimming.
“Merry Christmas,” Annalee says to the skinny, swimming polar bear. “Merry evermore.”
And she takes another drink. --TK
Tuesday, December 14, 2021