My daughter’s friends called her “Barbie” because of her platinum blond hair.

Maya was lean and willowy, with deep brown eyes and a winning smile. But

she was no dumb blonde.

She appeared in her first play at the age of nine, portraying one of the “no

neck monsters” in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams. Maya was a

natural actress. She had a combination of charisma and vulnerability that

commanded attention.

Offstage, her artistic personality was challenging: one minute sunny and

witty, the next gloomy and surly. As she became a teen, she increasingly

defied me.

In Swimming with Maya I recount a painful confrontation that marked the

nadir of our relationship. By her junior year in high school Maya had become

a binge drinker, something I was too naïve and frightened to acknowledge.

But the summer before her senior year, things came to a head when I

discovered her coming home two hours after her curfew.

I confronted her. When she insisted she was going out again at two o’clock in

the morning, I blocked her bedroom door.

“Think again, Maya,” I said. “You are not going anywhere.”

As we faced off in front of her door, she whispered under her breath, “You

bitch.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Maya said, eyes flashing.

“You are grounded for a month,” I said.

She showered me with curse words. I slammed the bedroom door, furious and

humiliated. A few minutes later I heard her bedroom window open, and then

her car tires squealing away from the curb. Maya had run away.

For the rest of the story, please visit my guest post at http://betteleecrosby.com/2013/10/18/please-welcome-nyt-bestseller/. Bette Lee Crosby hosts my full post about “Parenting a Gifted or Difficult Teen” on her excellent blog Words, Wit and Wisdom.