Some Kind of breaking ice
By Arno Bohlmeijer
For a long time she’s dreaded the thought of a dominant or loud and shallow son-in-law, who’d barge in and ruin their brittle hominess. The young, hard-working widow and her quiet college daughter, share a house and are not used to much male company. But all of a sudden here’s Russ, thirty-two, the college teacher and picture of politeness, decency, sportiness, honesty.
Beth and Jan have already booked their mountain vacation for the summer. Apprehensive yet benevolent, Beth decides to be most kind and invite Russ to join them. Delightfully surprised, he accepts humbly. Beth finds a good room in a charming inn for herself, so she can leave ‘their little cottage’ to the couple.
They do have meals and go hiking together, frequently enough, but Beth gives them all the appropriate space, grateful for this rather unique arrangement, if a bit lonely in the evenings.
Roving uphill, Beth is happy to lag behind, quite content with her own climbing pace, then radiant to catch up for a scary steep stretch, or for a chat and sandwich, resting on a boulder or a piece of dry grass and moss, with a team look at the map, awed by the view and achievement. They love the high and quiet regions, where patches of snow and ice bring adventures with childlike fun.
In a terrific landscape, they discover a mini lake off the track at 2400 metres. In the hot and deserted sunshine it looks idyllic, although there’s plenty of ice and snow on the banks.
During their spell of admiration and elation, Russ is taking his clothes off, saying, “I can’t walk by without a dip.”
Jan smiles and tests the water. “It’s literally freezing.”
Russ is a man of few words. “It’s tradition. Can’t be as cold as Iceland.”
Where he was the previous year, in a group of singles.
While Beth wonders about the lack of bathing suits and towels, Russ has fully undressed, including his underpants, and in the bright, all-revealing light, this unspoilt Adam as academic as athletic, finds a water spot that looks fairly safe, to walk in at relative ease, not awkward and hasty in front of his future Mom-in-law, who is only a dozen years older than he is.
Beth, in her turn, is not goggling but acting as if it’s dead normal. She strips all the way too, follows him across a few stepping stones, and enters the mountain pond until she’s eye to eye with the snow. It’s too cold to scream, her heart or throat are cut off, and she needs to swim as hard and fast as possible, then she can breathe and be immensely pleased.
After a minute she clambers onto a snow bank and stands up, utterly naked and savoring the sunshine, her heart thankfully and silently warmed by her daughter’s man.
Arno Bohlmeijer is the winner of a PEN America Grant 2021, a poet and novelist, writing in English and Dutch, published in six countries, US: Houghton Mifflin, and in Universal Oneness: An Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World. His novel Narrowly will appear in September 2025, at Running Wild Press. www.arnobohlmeijer.com
Nancy Nolet relocated to Baltimore to obtain her philosophy degree at UMBC. Alongside her multi-decade real estate career, she is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at Towson University. For many years, Nancy explored various forms of artistic expression, but it was during a mixed-media workshop in her mid-twenties that she discovered her true artistic medium. Her work examines the interplay between raw materials and man-made industrial objects by constructing whimsical sculptures from salvaged materials. Drawing inspiration from the Surrealist and Steampunk movements, she aims to ignite curiosity through compelling representations of the world’s mysterious, bizarre, and formidable creatures.