He is a good boy, affectionate and especially kind to animals. It puzzles him that Sophie the cat runs away from him when all he wants to do is hold her close and listen to her purr. I tell him he'll learn about females in good time.

Parker has a fine appetite as long as chocolate is involved. With a constant sugar rush surging through his sixty-five pounds, how on earth does the kid ever sleep?

This boy, unlike a lot of kids his age, can happily entertain himself for hours on end. If the Cartoon Network has been clicked on, chances are I won't hear a peep out of him until he needs another chocolate fix.

While I soak in the sun on the beach, Parker begins to dig a hole at my feet. He fills one bucket after another with sand, packs them tight, then turns them upside down. Shaping. Molding. Building. He stands back to admire his work and smiling, spreads his arms. "I'm King of this soon-to-be Castle," he proclaims, and I am so reminded of his daddy at that age.

My eyes are blurry with sudden tears as I wonder if I'll be around when he morphs into a longer, lankier version of the little boy at my feet. Will I ever see him lope down that distant football field? Youth is swift, but time is swifter when you are a grandparent.

Parker, working like a beaver, digs a tunnel around his sand castle and slowly and carefully designs a makeshift moat. "It's a moat," he tells me, as if I had just landed on planet earth.

He scouts around the beach area until he finds a piece of paper the size of a label, which he declares to be a perfect castle flag. Two minutes later, having pushed a twig through the paper, he places it strategically on top of his castle. He grins, showing off that big tooth of his.

He is so delighted with what he has built that he almost crows. The little one-tooth wonder's smile stretches even wider across his face as though he has created the Taj Mahal. I grin, too, because I can't help myself. His aha moment is contagious.

Then, in one swifter than youth, swifter than time moment, he shouts, 'HURRICANE!"

Hands and arms come swooping down full-force and, just that quickly, the sand castle is whacked into the middle of kingdom come.

It was, after all, only a house built on sand.