Mother-Son Bonding Time on At Home

Bel Pierce

September 22, 2022 6:00 PM

Mother-Son Bonding Time by Bel Pierce

Bel stood on the platform beside Deidre, watching the wagon fly away on its way to Sonora. Well, it was going in the wrong direction for that, as it had other students to pick up first, but ultimately, that was where it would bring her oldest two children.

She supposed they weren't children anymore. Mab was newly eighteen, and Alexander would be as well in just a few months. She wasn't sure what else she could call them, though. They weren't her offspring. That word had a very biological parent connotation to it. 'Daughter and son' was accurate but it was tedious to say as a collective. She guessed they were just going to be stuck being called her kids for the rest of their lives. Briefly, she wondered what Amelia called her and Three collectively, but then decided she didn't want to know. It was probably insulting.

It was probably 'kids'.

Right then. She turned her attention back to her remaining family. Winston and Caitlin were long since graduated so there was no need to avoid Wesley on the platform (or be annoyingly conspicuous where he couldn't acknowledge she existed) so she just held out a hand to both her wife and youngest son. They did so, and in a blink of an eye, they were back in their apartment.

"Whoo!" Reilly cheered while Deidre looked mildly ill. She did not care for portkeys, but Reilly loved them. Bel preferred apparition, but side-along wasn't recommended with more than one passenger and with Mab and Alexander gone, she was the only remaining witch in their nuclear family.

If someone had told her when she was eleven that she'd end up married to a muggle woman and raising three children she had no blood relation to, she would have definitely punched them in the face for impugning her honor. Strange how life worked out sometimes. She couldn't imagine not living this life, now. Reilly was a nice comfortable five now. Diapers were just a terrible memory and the worst of his tantrums seemed to be have faded, thank Merlin. He was in kindergarten and was working on learning to read. He was almost like a real person now.

"Hey, kid, want to learn the bo? Like Donatello?" she asked.

He loved Ninja Turtles. He watched the first season dvds so often she'd had to put preserving charms on them out of fear that they might wear out.

"YEAH!" he screamed in absolute enthusiasm and ran for the workout room.

Deidre shook her head, an expression of resignation on her face. "If we get notes from his principal, you need to go in to explain."

Bel waved that off, unconcerned. "When not to fight is as much a part of the discipline as the fighting technique is."

She looked justifiably unconvinced.

"I'll do the talking with the principal," Bel promised, and followed after Reilly more sedately. She found him already in the training room, warming up with some stretches. She raised an eyebrow, impressed. "Have you been spying on me and your sister?"

"Yup!" he declared, grinning, and displaying a complete lack of shame that probably came from being five.

"All right, then, my young padawan," she paused to see if he caught the reference and he sat up straighter and prouder, beaming at her like she'd given him the world.

"Am I gonna learn lightsabers, too?" he asked eagerly, proving that he did indeed understand what she had called him. Good.

"Yes. When you are older. We will start your training, however, with the bo. Accio." She reached toward a wall, and one of the quarterstaffs hanging there flew toward her. She caught it and twirled it in her hands, then held it toward Reilly. "You try it."

Reilly reached toward the wall, mimicking her exactly, "Accio." Nothing, predictably, happened, but he looked crushed.

Bel knelt down next to him, holding out her bo. "I meant with this one. Your Force manipulation training will also begin when you are older." She was reasonably sure he was going to be like Mab and have magic. There had already been a few minor incidents that could be more easily explained by accidental magic than anything else.

Reilly made a face. "Jedi younglings start at my age."

"And when we move to Coruscant, we can send you to a Jedi temple. Until then, you need to wait until you are old enough to go to Sonora. Here. Focus. Take the bo." He took it and she realized that while it was sized for a very small adult (herself), it was still far too large for Reilly. "Let's shrink that down for you." Her wand popped out into her hand, she waved it over the wooden stick and it reduced down to a more manageable size for him. "Better." She holstered her wand back into her sleeve. "Now hold the bo like there's a fight about to happen. Let's work on your form. How you hold yourself is important for all disciplines, whether that be the bo, the lightsaber, or fighting with a wand..."

1 Bel Pierce Mother-Son Bonding Time 0 Bel Pierce 1 7

Deidre Beales

August 04, 2023 10:06 PM

A Bel by any other name would sound just as dangerous by Deidre Beales

OOC: Fuzzy time abuse! Takes place not long after the post I’m replying to, and it’s somewhat related, so continuing on… BIC:

“I know you have a whole Jedi padawan training … thing … going on,” Deidre said softly to her wife as they sat together on a park bench, watching Reilly play on the playground. Star Wars wasn’t really her thing, but Reilly talked enough about it that she had a pretty good grasp on how Jedi became Jedi. Bel really was basically a real life Jedi as far as either Reilly or Deidre herself could tell, and Reilly probably would become one, too, so she understood that some training was necessary, even if it was more Ninja Turtle than Star Wars right now.

Deidre had also seen enough of the 80s cartoon (two episodes, every day, for months - and Bel only had two seasons on DVD, so all three of them could recite whole scenes of it) to know ‘master’ was also how apprentices of that art addressed their teacher, but … “I don’t think our five year old son should be calling you ‘Master Bel’ in public,” Deidre said to her wife.

Bel looked like this was something she hadn’t ever noticed was a problem until it was pointed out to her but now that it was, she could see the issue and resented that she now had to do something about it.

“I’ll think about what he should call me instead,” she conceded. “Mab and Alexander just call me Bel, and that’s fine, I guess, but they were all but adults already when I adopted them. Reilly probably won’t even remember not living with me. I kind of feel like he should call me something other than just my first name.”

Deidre got that. Bel was Reilly’s second parent in every way that mattered, and she’d been in his life since he was two. Deidre herself had dibs on ‘Mom’ and ‘Mommy’ but she’d gladly support whatever other parental form of address Bel wanted to use. “Sure, let me know when you figure it out and I’ll help encourage it.”

—-

“Why do all the books and shows have kids with a mom and a dad and never two moms?” Reilly asked one evening before Bel had decided on something other than ‘Master Bel’ for him to call her.

While Deidre floundered on how to address this, Bel answered quite matter-of-factly, “Because the authors don’t want to make the kids who only have one mom jealous.” Deidre was a little surprised by the remark because as far as she knew, Bel had adored her father and had very few good experiences with her own mother.

Reilly frowned for a moment, then nodded like this made sense to him. But then he frowned again. “They don’t worry about making the ones without a dad sad?” Reilly asked, sounding a little upset, but she thought it was more at the unfair bias shown than because he was sad about not having a father.

Bel fielded that one, too. “They should try to be more representative,” she agreed. “Kids with two moms, or two dads, or just one of either, or some other configuration other than the traditional heterosexual parents, do not get to see their families in popular media nearly often enough.”

Reilly obviously did not understand some of those big words, but he nodded solemnly anyway, satisfied that Bel seemed to be taking his grievance seriously.

“Are you sad you don’t have a dad?” Deidre asked, just to make sure he didn’t feel resentful about their family structure. She didn’t know what she’d do if he was, but knowing a problem existed was the first step to addressing it.

“No,” Reilly denied. “Master Bel plays sports with me and fixes stuff when it breaks, and she can open pickle jars, too, all by herself!”

Deidre was not sure what he’d been exposed to that said those were the important duties of a father, but she glanced at Bel anyway to make sure she was okay with being typecast as being the one to fill the stereotypical man’s role in their family.

Bel shrugged back, not seeming to mind, and in fact looked more than a little pleased that she had been deemed strong enough to take on any pickle jar and win.

—-

“I’m thinking Bomb,” Bel said, apropos of nothing one night.

“Bomb?” Diedre repeated, confused. “Bath bomb? I think there’s one left. Should I fill the tub?”

“Not a bath bomb, just Bomb,” Bel said, shaking her head and not helping Deidre understand what she was talking about. “It rhymes with Mom, it starts with the same letter as my name, and it’s horrifically dangerous.”

Deidre blinked. “You want Reilly to call you Bomb?”

“Can you think of anything better?” Bel challenged. “You’re Mom, and every language I checked is either so close to that it’ll just be confusing or so different I don’t recognize it as having meaning. I’m not going to answer to dad or pops or anything ridiculously masculine. Bomb combines my name with Mom and I like it.”

Deidre shrugged. Honestly, she had looked into it some too, and hadn’t seen better. “All right. Tomorrow we’ll tell Reilly he should start calling you Bomb.” She paused a moment then asked, "You want me to run the tub?"

"Yeah."

1 Deidre Beales A Bel by any other name would sound just as dangerous 0 Deidre Beales 0 5