My name is Nicole Hayes. I’m 44 years old. I’m a hospital administrator at St. Luke’s in Kansas City. My husband, Scott, supervises job sites for a commercial construction company.
And for the six weeks before that Thursday night, I’d been watching my daughter slip away from me without understanding why.
To understand how it happened, you have to know how much she loved to dance.
Audrey used to practice ballet in our tiny kitchen every single morning while she waited for her toast to pop.
“You’re going to kick the refrigerator,” I’d warn her, holding my coffee out of the way.
“I won’t,” she’d say, rising up on her toes. “I need to be disciplined, Mom. So I need to control my movements.”
She’d turn, and turn again, in the three feet of space between the counter and the table. Somehow she never once hit the refrigerator.
She took beginner classes at the community center when she was eleven. Then the classes went up to $140 a month, and we couldn’t afford to keep her enrolled. Scott’s hours had been cut that year. My car needed a new transmission.
So Audrey taught herself.
She watched tutorials on YouTube. She checked out every ballet book the Johnson County Library had. She saved her birthday money for two years to buy her first real pointe shoes, $96 at a dance supply store in Overland Park. She broke them in herself, the way the videos showed her, bending the shanks and sewing on the ribbons at our kitchen table.
Then, last fall, she auditioned for the advanced teen program at Westbrook Academy. It’s one of the most respected studios in the Kansas City area. Girls from there go on to dance at college programs and regional companies.
She came bursting through our front door on a Tuesday afternoon in September, waving her phone over her head.
“Mom! Mom! They accepted me!”
I read the email twice before I let myself believe it. Then I wrapped my arms around her and held on.
“That’s incredible, sweetheart.”
“And look. Look at this part.”
She scrolled down. They’d offered her a merit scholarship covering 80 percent of her tuition. The program cost $4,200 a year. We’d owe $840. Seventy dollars a month.
“That’s incredible,” I said again. I couldn’t stop saying it.
“So can I go? Please say yes. Please, please say yes.”
I wanted to.
The problem was getting her there.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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