#1

She stood in the doorway of her parents' office and watched her mother, who at the moment was distracted and looking out the window. "Mom?" Maia called out, staying in the doorway and waiting for her mother to recognize her. Growing up with Joan Campbell as her mother, she knew that when her mother was working, you never knew what kind of mood you'd find her in, so it was better to just be cautious.

Joan shook her head like she'd been mentally somewhere else, and swiveled her chair toward the doorway. "Yes?" she said, smiling at her 10, almost 11 year old daughter. Maia had her father's shockingly blue eyes, but her features and her blonde hair that fell in waves down her back were pure Joan. Looking at her, Joan couldn't help but see the similarities between the two of them, and the similarities weren't just in physical appearance. Maia was cautious and a rule follower, but she was by no means timid. She wanted to feel out situations before jumping in, but had ambitious goals and was good at making plans to achieve them - even if her goals were more about manipulating her parents to let her do something or figuring out how she could improve her tennis game. She was tenacious and committed like Joan, and more than willing to work hard to get what she wanted.

Maia heard her mother acknowledge her, and saw her turn toward her, but still Maia stayed stuck in the doorway.

"Mai?" Joan tried again, "Everything okay?"

"Um yeah. Can we talk when you get a minute? It doesn't have to be now." Maia said, twirling her hair and looking down at the ground.

"Sure, how about now?" Joan said brightly, "Why don't you come all the way in?"

Maia stepped inside the softly lit home office her parents shared. It had two long windows that looked out toward the front yard that sloped down toward the street. Her parents both had desks that were perpendicular to the windows and faced each other, but were about 6 feet apart. Parallel to the windows, and against the same wall as the doorway was a velvety dove gray couch. Maia loved to lounge on that couch and read, or just nap while one or both of her parents were working away on their "off" days. Being close to their activity and their work made her feel close to them. But as she'd gotten older herself, she'd spent less and less time there, and more time at lessons, with friends, and soon she'd be off at summer camp.

Maia settled herself onto the sofa, cross-legged, with her back against the arm. Joan noted how Maia was positioning herself, and knew that when Maia set herself up to avoid eye contact, she was getting ready to say something that made her uncomfortable. Knowing that this was the case, Joan couldn't quite decide whether she should go sit by her daughter to be reassuring, or whether she should stay where she was so that Maia could continue to avoid the eye contact. Before she could make the decision, Maia started talking.

Looking straight ahead at the other (empty) side of the couch, Maia asked her mother, "Why do you send me to sleep away camp in the summer?"

If Joan hadn't been a spy she was sure her mouth would have just dropped open. She had to admit that her spy skills at concealing emotions were constantly tested as a parent, and she found it harder to hide her feelings when she was with her daughter, but she managed to hold it together in that moment and instead ask her daughter, "Do you think we're sending you away? I thought you wanted to go to sleep away camp?"

Maia was quiet for a few moments, and Joan didn't push her. Alike as they were, Joan knew that Maia was probably wrestling with what to say and how to say it, so she gave her the time to work that out in her mind. Finally Maia broke the silence, "I guess I do want to go. I mean," and she paused for another moment, "I asked to go, and it'll be fun, but sometimes I, well it's just, I guess." After another pause, she finally blurted out what she'd probably been wanting to say the whole time, "What if I want to go for you and dad, not for me?"

"Well," Joan started, trying to decide where to begin, "Is that how you feel right now?-that you want to go for me and your dad and not for yourself?"

There was some nodding of the blonde head. Since Maia didn't actually say anything, Joan continued, "Well if you don't want to go, we're not going to make you, okay?"

More nodding.

"Do you want to skip camp this year?" Joan asked her daughter, pushing for more information. Maia had been going to camp since she was 5. First just as a day camper, but when she was 9 she started doing sleep away camp. The first year it was for a week, but this year it was going to be for two weeks. She'd wanted to go and been excited about it, and to be honest she and Arthur were excited to have the house to themselves for two weeks, but making Maia go to camp definitely didn't seem like the right thing to do. Plus it seemed like there was something deeper going on with her. Joan was able to get through all these thoughts because Maia hadn't responded at all about whether she wanted to skip camp this year. No nodding, no talking. Joan studied her daughter from the side she could see, and tried to figure out what was going on with her. When Maia finally turned her head slightly toward her and softly said, "I'm not sure," Joan saw tears in her eyes. She crossed the room, and sat down next to her little girl. Maia pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her legs, almost as though she was trying to hide her face and emotions from her mother. Joan let her, and just placed her own hand on her daughter's pink-socked feet. "Mai, are all these feelings about camp, or something bigger?"

Joan let the question hang in the air for a minute.

Maia honestly wasn't sure how to respond to that question. Her feelings were about camp, but she also knew they weren't just about camp. She didn't know what to tell her mom, and she wasn't sure her mom would want to hear how she felt - not to mention the fact that she wasn't sure she could verbalize her feelings.

When she didn't respond, Joan looked at her, and reached out, brushing Maia's hair back behind her ears. "Hey, you know you can tell me anything right?"

Maia nodded, but she wasn't totally sure she could tell her mom this.

"Do you think your dad and I want you to go away?" Joan asked, trying to help her daughter share her feelings.

Maia shook her head at first, but then looked up at her mom and with a tear slipping out of her right eye said, "Not go away totally, but a little."

"Oh," Joan said looking down at her own hands, "That's not good is it?"

Maia shook her head no and started to cry in earnest – silently, but the tears were flowing, and Joan could see Maia's little body heaving. "Come here," she said to her daughter, and Maia willingly let her mother pull her onto her lap. Sitting there sideways, Maia buried her head in her mother's shoulder and let herself continue to cry. Joan stroked her hair, and whispered down to her, "Maia, I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm sorry for whatever your dad and I did to make you feel like that, because we don't want you to go away. We love you *so* much. We thought you wanted to go to camp, but we'd never make you go if you didn't want to."

Maia kept crying, but with time Joan could hear her breathing slowing down and becoming more regular. "Shhhh," she whispered to her, kissing the top of her head and trying to soothe her.

"I'm sorry mom," Maia choked out once she had gotten a hold of herself enough to talk.

"You never need to apologize for the way you feel," Joan assured her as she looked her daughter in the eyes, "I'm glad you came to tell me what you were feeling, but I think we should probably talk about why you feel that way so that your dad and I don't continue to make you feel this way."

Maia nodded, and leaned her head back against Joan's shoulder. The two of them sat there in silence for a little while both of them psyching themselves up for the conversation to come, and both contentedly sharing space with each other, and enjoying just being close.

For her part, Joan wasn't sure where to start this conversation. She really wanted to know what it was specifically that she and Arthur were doing to make her daughter think they wanted her to go away to camp. But being a pretty experienced interrogator, Joan knew that it really got you nowhere to ask questions that people couldn't answer, and she imagined that Maia might not be able to pinpoint specific behaviors or things they'd said that made her feel as she did. So, instead Joan started with, "Maia, can you tell me why you would go to camp for me and your dad, even if it wasn't something you really wanted to do?"

Without hesitation, Maia responded, "Because I love you. Because you're my parents. Because I want you to be happy."

"Do you think we're happier when you're not around?" Joan asked, a little anxious about how Maia was going to respond.

"I think you're less worried," Maia said carefully.

"Hm," Joan started, "Can you tell me what you think we're worried about?"

Maia took a deep breath and then said quietly, "Me." And then since her mother didn't ask another question, Maia continued, "I think you worry a lot about me - getting home in time to see me, making sure I'm happy, making sure that you're getting your work done even though you're spending time with me, I think I make your life harder. I hear you talking to daddy sometimes about who is going to pick me up, how someone has to be home for dinner and homework and bedtime, and how it's summer so it's even more important since I'm on vacation. So I thought if I went to camp for two weeks then you guys could have two weeks to not worry about all that and just live your lives." As she finished talking, Maia realized she'd let all that out and never taken a breath in, so she inhaled deeply and let a few more tears drip out. The tears now were a little bit about sadness, but also tears of relief that she'd gotten all these feelings off her chest.

Now it was Joan's turn to take a deep breath. She took couple, and she hugged her daughter closer to her. She wasn't ready to respond yet, she knew she needed to, but she was actually afraid that if she opened her mouth to talk, she'd cry, and she didn't want Maia to feel like she'd made her cry. So Joan just hugged Maia as she pulled herself together. When she was finally ready to talk, Joan kept hugging Maia as she tried to reassure her about how much she was loved. "Mai, You're right. Balancing being a good mom to you with my job is hard, but YOU don't make it hard. You make it worth the challenges. You are my top priority. I love my job too, but you're my top priority. When your dad I talk, or even when we argue about who is doing what when, it's because we want to make sure that you are well taken care of, in spite of the crazy jobs we have. We love you SO much. And sure, our lives would be less complicated for two weeks if you went to camp, but our lives would be so much quieter, and we'd miss you! You keep us on our toes, you make us laugh, you make us stop and do fun things and silly things. You help us remember to be people, not just workers, and to enjoy things in life. So life is more complicated with you in it but it's so much better with you in our lives, we never wish you weren't here." As she talked, Joan realized just how deep these convictions of hers were, and she felt a couple of her own tears slip out. Having Maia had not exactly been planned at the outset, but ultimately having Maia was something that she and Arthur both wanted and looked forward to. Neither of them were sure what kind of parents they would be, but as they went through Joan's pregnancy, they both felt drawn to this little being they'd created and were so excited to meet her when she was born. Raising Maia wasn't without conflict for sure - figuring out how to balance their work and family responsibilities was hard, and Joan often felt like the brunt of it all fell on her. Sometimes it made her angry and she let her frustration out to Arthur when she felt like he wasn't balancing work and family in a way that supported her, but it was never because she wanted Maia less, or wanted her job more. She just wanted Maia to have a happy childhood, and she also wanted to continue to excel at her job. Maybe she couldn't have her cake and eat it too, she was realizing. Seeing Maia so upset and feeling like she and Arthur didn't want her, or saw her as a complication hit Joan hard. She never wanted her daughter to feel anything less than deeply loved, but ensuring that in their reality of her and Arthur's lives was apparently a lot harder than she'd thought, and she'd never thought it would be or was easy. She sighed, and she squeezed Maia a little tighter.

If she'd looked down at her daughter, Joan would have seen that Maia had started to smile a little as Joan talked. Instead, it was Maia who looked up when she felt her mom hug her. Seeing her mother's tears, Maia's brow furrowed and with concern in her voice she asked her mother, "What's wrong?" She wasn't sure she'd ever seen her mother cry. Joan smiled down at Maia, and wiped away her tears. "Nothing sweetheart, I mean I'm sad that you've felt the way you did, but I'm also just remembering how happy your dad and I were when you were born and how happy I still am that you're my daughter."

"Mom," Maia said, "I'm not sure I want to go to camp."

A strangled little laugh came out of Joan, "Yeah. I got that Mai."

"No seriously mom," Maia said, a little more firmly this time, "I'm not sure I want to go, BUT I'm not sure I don't want to go either. I mean I know it'll be fun, and I did want to go, I'm just not sure how to feel."

"Well, you don't have to make a decision right now. You're not supposed to leave for another week. And when the time comes, you can go or not go. Your dad won't be thrilled to drive you all the way there to just bring you back, but if that's what happens, that's what happens. He loves you to death, and he'd do anything for you. So why don't you just think about it, and make the decision when the time comes. No pressure either way, okay?" Joan said, smiling down at her daughter.

"Okay." Maia said as she played with her mother's necklace. "Thanks mom."

Joan didn't say anything in response. She just kissed the little head that was still leaning on her shoulder.