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" I can feel it looming like a bear that&amp;#039;s coming out of hibernation: Puberty is waking up, and it&amp;#039;s hungry. I hope it doesn&amp;#039;t eat us all alive. With any luck, it&amp;#039;ll be kind, and I&amp;#039;ll wind up with a teenager like my neighbor, Paul. One evening, Paul came to my house with his mother to deliver a homemade dinner, as many of our generous neighbors have done this year while we undergo construction and I endure cancer treatments.  When he saw how overwhelmed I was because I had to coach a soccer game despite having undergone chemotherapy just three days earlier, he said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll help you.&amp;quot; And then he rushed home, got his soccer shoes and ran back in time for us to take him to the game with us.  Did I mention he&amp;#039;s a teenager? Don&amp;#039;t teens hang out on Facebook all night, brooding? Other 13-year-olds wouldn&amp;#039;t even have made eye contact with me, choosing instead to mumble &amp;quot;Hi&amp;quot; at their mothers&amp;#039; prompting or to turn up their iPods and pretend they don&amp;#039;t see the sick mom in the headscarf lugging a bag of soccer balls to the car. But not Paul.  Sitting in the car next my third- and fourth-grade boys, Paul looked like the answer in a game of &amp;quot;Which one of these is not like the others?&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s tall. His voice is changing. His shoes are bigger than mine. And yet, he&amp;#039;s still a kid. At the soccer field, he organized my team into two lines and encouraged them to practice shooting on goal. During the game, he&amp;#039;d yell what I couldn&amp;#039;t (or at least, shouldn&amp;#039;t), having lost much of my strength and shouting voice to chemo. And on the way home, he made small talk with my boys about teachers and band practice. (Paul plays the tuba...the tuba is bigger than my sons.) When we dropped him off at his house, he waved good-bye and wished me well \u2013 and I wished I had a daughter to marry off to him in a decade or so. Also, that I had whatever his parents are using to tame the puberty bear, because it seems as though it&amp;#039;s working on Paul. His mother assures me that he&amp;#039;s not always that helpful and sweet. Just ask his little brother. But he&amp;#039;s not sullen or disgruntled toward grown-ups, either. He&amp;#039;s made it to 13 without hiding in his room and IM-ing strangers about how unfair the world is, or sneaking out at night to blow up mailboxes \u2013 likely mine \u2013 with M-80&amp;#039;s. I hope only that when my kids hit 13, they act like Paul. Also, that he&amp;#039;ll come to another soccer game with me. When Paul is there, I get to sit down. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a2138/good-grief-102307/>