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Life is tough enough for a single mother with a preteen son. I didn't know how much tougher it could get until last Halloween when my son decided he was becoming a werewolf.

Halloween 2006 started much like every other year. My son Jake declared he was too old to go trick or treating. At 12 he would rather watch the non-stop horror movies on TV. I told myself that his behavior was normal. All preteen boys become preoccupied with fantasy and movies and video games. But his obsession didn't stop.

He seemed especially enticed by werewolf movies. He watched every one he could rent, borrow, or download. He also complained of strange happening within his body. I tried to reassure him that it was normal for boys his age to experience changes, that it was part of becoming a man. He didn't believe me. I could see that in his eyes, eyes that looked so much like his father's. "Mom, you're not a guy. What do you know about it?" he would ask with a deep sigh.

I passed it off as a phase he was going through. At least I did, until the day he came to me to tell me that he knew what caused his trouble. He decided he was becoming a werewolf.

I didn't know what to say. What could I say? How could I show that I respected him while helping him connect with reality? I asked if he had been bitten by a werewolf. He said he didn't think so, and admitted that he probably would have remembered if he had been. If he hadn't been bitten, how was it that he was becoming a werewolf? He had inherited the werewolf gene from his father, he declared.

Jake never knew his father who died before Jake was born. I shared what I could with him, which included no information about his father turning furry under a full moon. I would have noticed that, I told Jake with a straight face.

He wouldn't believe me. I'm just a mother. What could I possibly know? I decided to enlist the help of his father's family. Maybe they could convince him that they were a normal, if filthy rich, family who didn't howl at the moon. I had kept Jake's existence from them, since I was afraid they would try to take him away from me. I couldn't match their resources, but they couldn't match my love for the boy who made up my entire world.

Knowing that Marc had a son surprised the family, but they insisted on meeting Jake at the earliest possible moment. I received a surprise myself. Marc had an identical twin brother that he had never mentioned. Truth be told, he never said much about his family at all. He tried his best to escape their

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