Letters to Audrine

14- What Are My Life Goals?

"I'm going to be honest, Maisie," my mom tells me over the phone. "I thought you'd be home by now. What are you doing over there?"

"I'm just exploring," I say, even though she knows almost everything I've been doing here. I actually think that I've talked to her more overseas than I did when we lived under the same roof. We still talk everyday and I tell her about every shopping trip, every meal I eat. I even told her about Silas, without mentioning the kissing part. "I really like it here."

"Well, we miss you over here," she sighs. "And Trevor has been so bored without you here to play with him."

"I'm sure he'll be fine. Sign him up for a summer camp or something," I sit down on the edge of my messy bed. "I don't think I'll be coming home anytime soon."

"Well, you're not going to have a lot of time to do any dorm shopping once you get home, assuming you're not doing any of that while you're in France," my mom changes the subject a little bit. "So I think that I'll just order some stuff for you and hope you like it."

"That's fine, I'm not too picky about what my dorm looks like."

"When I was your age, buying things for my dorm room was so much fun," she tells me. "I spent my whole summer picking out my comforter, and storage units, and futon."

"I don't think I'm as excited for college as you were, Mom," I tell her with a laugh. I could tell she's been the most excited one in the family since forever at the thought of me going to college. She's always asked me where I would want to go to college, taking me on visits since I started high school, going over college applications for months. I was just along for the ride, feeling very apathetic to the process. I don't hate school, but I don't love it either. And doing four more years of it just doesn't really excite me at all.

"You should be," she insists. "College is your first time to really get away from home and live by yourself without your father and I."

"I'm living away from home right now," I remind her.

"It's different," my mom says quickly. "College is a rite of passage. It's a stepping stone to your life goals."

"What are my life goals?"

I know what she's going to say-- that my life goals are to become just like her. To take over the company, get married, pop out a couple of kids. I don't feel like those are my goals in life, but those are her goals in life. I don't even know why I asked.

"To be successful, Maisie," she keeps the answer vague at first, but then she decides to add, "It's everything that we've worked for. To be a part of the Henlock business."

"I don't know," I shrug, answering a question that she didn't even ask. I never talk back to my mom, but maybe the free spirit I've been feeling since I got to France is rubbing off on me more than I realized. "I feel like those are your goals for me, but I don't know what my goals are for me."

"I thought those were the same thing," she sounds very confused. "They are our goals for you."

"It doesn't feel like that," I admit to her, kind of dreading how I'm leading this conversation. But maybe it's a conversation that needs to happen. A conversation that has needed to be had for a very long time, but one that I've been terrified to start. Maybe it's easier now, that she's so far away. "You've never asked me what my goals are. And I'm not saying that I don't want to join the company, I'm just saying that I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" After sounding confused, she now sounds slightly irritated. "You've always been excited to follow in my footsteps."

"No, you've been excited for me," I inform her, rolling my eyes. The more we talk, the more frustrated I feel because she sounds so shocked that I'm bringing this up. I know that it's probably bad timing, but I have never expressed an excitement about going to Brown and joining the consulting company that my grandpa started. I don't feel like she has any right to be surprised that I'm not excited for it, because she's never cared about what I want. "You've never asked me what I want, Mom. I don't have any life goals that are mine and not yours."