“You’re going to be okay.” We’ve been driving for five minutes and that’s her opening line.

No. I’m not going to be okay. I have a fifteen-year plan. Prove myself. Join Mom on Broadway. We’re going to be magnificent together. I’ve barely started! I’ve only performed in New York! I’m supposed to go everywhere! Work my way around the world and back!

Nothing is okay. This can’t be a permanent hiatus. I don’t do hiatuses in the first place! I’m consistent. I’m dedicated. I’m all the keys to success! I’m committed to all of them!

“Siri, it could be much worse, and I’m so grateful that for all intents and purposes, you’re going to be fine.”

That comment hurts more than I expect it to. I can’t bring myself to be grateful. How can she say that? I can’t break up with ballet! I’m not good enough at anything else.

My chest is convulsing. I’m trying to stay quiet, but I can’t quite rein in the sound of my pent-up sobs.

“Siri, take a deep breath, get ahold of yourself.”

Mom can’t stand it when I get like this. Sensitive. I watch as her knuckles whiten against the steering wheel.

When I was a kid and emotions got the better of me, Mom would go out of her way to spend time together. We’d cook things. We’d watch one of the many dance shows cramming our DVR. Learn the routines together. I don’t think she was ever comfortable with my tears, but at least she tried to make things better. Now she powers down.

We don’t speak again until we’re home.

“You’re going to find a new dream,” Mom says as she drops her purse on a chair. I still at the edge of the kitchen as she heads toward the stove. The celebratory back-to-dance-date-appointment cranberry granola bars I made earlier are sitting there mocking me now.

“What’d you make today?” Mom says as she pulls away the tinfoil over them.

Why isn’t she more upset about this?

I fell in love with ballet watching Mom soar across stages on invisible wings, watching her spin for eternities. Like she was barely human. I don’t know how many different times I’ve daydreamed about taking the stage with her. About the day she’d ask me to be in one of her shows. To even audition for one.

“You’ve never broken up with your dream, no matter how excrement it made things,” I respond belatedly to her first comment.

Mom twists away from the food, her face pinched, skin pulled taut by her tight ballet bun. “Life throws boulders in your path. It threw them in mine. Not the same ones, but they still fell, and I had to find a way to get around them.”