sam and I went to the beach on the morning of his eighth birthday last month. Last year at this time we had been at the annual writers conference in Sun Valley and I was trying to decide whether or not to let him go paragliding -- an acclaimed instructor had offered him the chance to soar in a tandem harness down from the snowy mountain that towered above the town -- and it took me over 24 hours of prayer, meditation and stricken phone calls before I realized I was not ready to toss him off any mountain. But even with this going on, I was much happier on his birthday last year. My life was pretty magical. I felt safe, and loved out of all sense of proportion, and I knew there must have been some little miracles along the way because I'd gotten to be a writer when I grew up. I mostly loved to write, and my writing was mostly loved. Now, this year, I'd hardly written in weeks, and then only pitiful little stream-of-consciousness writing exercises, like Job's wife trying to get the Artist's Way to work. I felt the jig was going to be up this time for sure; I'd end up being the anxious woman at the laundromat who hands out change -- "Here, here's some quarters. Don't use that machine, it overflows! Hey! That man's using your basket!" But Sam, at 8, is fantastic. He's so much bigger than he was last year. His legs are nearly longer legs than mine and he styles his hair now before he goes to school, moussifies it into a punky look sometimes, and other times slicks it back until (as he puts it) it looks fancy. His spiritual views are changing -- he says he doesn't believe in only Jesus now, but that may be to torture me: I'm not particularly concerned yet, but let me get back to you on this when he starts dropping L. Ron Hubbard into the conversation, or leaving Eck Speaks! pamphlets around for me to find. Half the time he's so gentle and sweet that grown-ups smile and shake their hands at such a good child. He has taught a number of their children to ride two-wheelers over the years, with infinite patience, and he gives them flattened bottle caps as medals of encouragement when they fail. But he can be terribly unfriendly with me, and he's got this new toughness, this teenage impersonation that he pulls out from time to time with varying effect. For instance -- I may have mentioned this before -- he told me not long ago, with rather nonchalant sadism, "No one thinks you're funny." Mostly it's pretty touching, though. I recently dropped him off for a couple of hours with our 14-year-old friend Rory, who is the coolest boy you've ever met, and Sam immediately went into this unconscious adolescent parody, Sean Penn at 50 pounds, all slouchy tics and slanted eyes and bored derision. When I picked Sam up from Rory's, he slouched out to the car with his bottom lip hanging down as if a lit cigarette dangled down from it, and as we drove off, Sam sneered, "He thinks he's so cool, but he doesn't even have the Disney channel." NEXT PAGE | My son makes amazing things out of garbage.

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