Stepmom by Reader Bella Braden

I married for the first time in my late 40′s. In addition to acquiring a husband I also inherited a 5 year old stepson named Joshua.

Before I married his father I spent a lot of time getting to know Josh. One day while we were playing legos I announced that I would have to stop playing soon so I could spend some time with his dad. Josh stopped dead in his tracks and looked up at me with his naïve and annoyed little face and said

“Why would you want to play with my dad? He’s just a parent!”

Huuummm, interesting point I thought, and so I stayed a while longer and built an addition onto my lego garage.

When Joshua came to my house for the first time a few weeks later, he kept wondering around, opening closet doors and intently looking into all the rooms of my home. Finally, he wandered back into the living room and asked me where my parents were. I told him I didn’t live with my parents anymore and that I lived by myself. His eyes grew big and he gasped,

“You mean you take care of yourself? You’re just a kid!”

“Yep I take care of myself,” I replied.

And so Joshua and I quickly became fast friends and partners in crime and I fell just as hard for him as I did with his dad, and a year later we became a family. Now, while most of my friends are packing up the last of their grown children and moving them out of the house, I am leaping off the back deck with my super hero cape on, and playing soccer, and running like the wind, and petting the fur on caterpillars backs and learning to love and nurture the family of pet rodents and albino frogs that live in our home. And after I have tucked the young lad in at night and I am icing down my knees from a long fun day of jumping and running and playing, I think how fortunate I am to have finally discovered the fountain of youth, not in a magic little pill but in a sweet, inquisitive, rambunctious little boy.

Cc: Bella Braden