Taking AJ to my parents' house was a revelation this year. I love that place. It's as much home as anything is to me. I've lived a highly transient life, but when I was about 14 or so, we started going to the place my parents live for vacations. And now, 25 years later, AJ is old enough to enjoy it as much as I did.

At home, AJ is often fearful. It's something I struggle to understand, because I was never like that. I plunged into things heedless of the consequences. But AJ is afraid. On the trip down, he quaked from the sound of the rain pounding on the car. Thunderstorms make him nervous. And he doesn't like to do things he's uncertain of. On vacation, he was a different boy.

At home, he won't ride his bicycle because he's afraid he will fall. On vacation, my parents had a red and black Schwinn, just his size and with training wheels, just sitting in their garage. AJ was fascinated. We rode to the beach our first day there and he was hooked. "This is super duper fun!" he shouted, pedaling at a pace so slow that I was forced to propel myself on my own bike by walking my feet on the ground.

By the end of the week, we were racing down the path to the beach and AJ was balancing precariously, at least for a few seconds, with both training wheels off the ground. His grin could have lit up half the eastern seaboard.

Once, too, he was afraid of the ocean. The very sound of it would send him scurrying up the boardwalk. It was so big, so loud, so predictably unpredictable in its complex mesh of waves. But he smiled non-stop on the beach, dancing in the waves, running forwards and backwards down the beach. For the first time I can remember, I had to caution him to come closer, to run slower, to not dive too far into the surf. "I'm your lifeguard," I told him. And he nodded before taking off again. A boy in flight is a glorious thing.

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