Written for Muse on Monday where David asks us
to write a story about our MC having an epiphany
at the beginning. Also written for Fandango’s Story
Starter #217 where the opening sentence is provided.
This is where the prompts and my imagination took me.
She sat in the chair, just staring off into space, feeling lost and unsure of her purpose in life. Celeste looked out the window of the New York City Riverside Drive penthouse apartment she shared with her parents since she was born 20 years ago. It was a stormy night, lightning staging a staccato tap dance above the Hudson River 16 stories below. As Celeste watched the gentle flow of the water, she had a startling realization.
For as long as she could remember, Celeste was groomed to follow in her parent’s footsteps in the field of medicine. Her father was a brilliant heart surgeon and her mother had achieved international renown as a plastic surgeon. It was a given that Celeste would attend medical school upon graduating college.
In that moment, Celeste knew she had been living her life according to her parent’s expectations and wishes, rather than following her own dreams and passions. She had been so focused on trying to please them that she had lost sight of her own happiness and fulfillment.
With a clear picture in her mind, Celeste made the bold and somewhat mind-blowing decision to break out of the family mold and pursue her passion for dance .… an activity she engaged in at summer performing arts camp and after school clubs but never had the courage to study formally. Her parents would, no doubt, freak out and threaten to disown her but they would, at the very least, humor her until she came to her senses. But Celeste knew she had already done that.
She felt like a giant weight had been lifted off her chest and she was filled with a sense of freedom and joy that she had never experienced before. Celeste began to dance with abandon through the rooms of the apartment, feeling like a bird soaring above the storm clouds. When she heard her parents key in the front door, she had a moment of panic and immediately questioned her life-changing decision. Then Celeste remembered the words to one of her favorite songs: “We are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong, searching our hearts for so long ….”, and she knew this was her destiny, her choice and hers alone.
NAR©2025
#MOM
#FSS
This is “Love Is A Battlefield” by Pat Benatar
All text and graphics are copyright for Nancy Richy and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 
Nicely done. The Pat Benatar was a nice touch
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Thanks, Mangus. Gotta get the music in, no matter what. Just saying.
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I thought my daughter would make an excellent doctor. She is the most empathetic person I know, very type A personality, very intelligent. But all she cared about was dance. This is an excellent story, and there is much fear in following your dreams as a young person! ✨🩷
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It’s quite something how your daughter’s true life story is similar to my fiction story! I hope she has had much success in her chosen career …. whatever that may be. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Lisa.
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It is funny! She moved to Chicago after graduating college and began dancing in companies, she’s choreographed, even put on shows, and she’s had fun for 15 years. She had a baby a year ago and stopped working for now.
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Sounds like a wonderful life for your daughter. If a woman decides she wants to stay home after her children are born instead of going back to work and is able to do so, she’s quite fortunate. Not everyone has that luxury. I didn’t go back to work after our babies were born and I cherished those years.
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My dad fixed television sets and my brother was an electrician, so I decided to study electrical engineering to better relate with them, kind of the opposite of your story.
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The bottom line is being able to pursue a line of work that makes us happy, whether it’s the family business or something entirely different. I feel sorry for people who hate their jobs and are trapped; it happens frequently. On the other side of the coin are the masses of unemployed people who would be happy with just about any type of job. Historically, many young men joined the military during WWII to secure a job and gain access to education benefits.
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Yes, jobs were in short supply during the depression and WW2 helped to pull us out of that. My dad used his GI Bill of Rights to study television repair, which was a new field back then. Today nobody gets TV sets repaired any more, we just throw them out and get new ones with bigger screens. Since TV sets changed from using vacuum tubes to printed circuit boards, they don’t break down as often as they used to.
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Very true, Jim. Few things are serviced these days, other than our cars and major appliances. That’s just the way it is. We are a disposable generation. I have my mother’s full-size Frigidaire freezer in our basement which she bought in 1965. That thing is a workhorse! It’s never been serviced and is still working like a charm. We can’t say that about anything these days.
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Yes Celeste go for it 💜💜💜
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Absolutely, she must! And I’m sure she’ll succeed. Thanks, Willow!
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💜💜💜💜
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You go Celeste- I am glad to see the younger set taking strength from the energy of the inimitable Pat Benatar!
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Years ago my husband and I were in Manhattan at one of the nightclubs to watch a friend do his stand-up act. When he was done, a very young Pat Benatar came on the stage to perform. She was relatively unknown and at that time she was into opera and the standards from the 40s. You know what these clubs are like; people are eating and drinking and can be rudely indifferent to a young performer who looks like she’s afraid of her own shadow. To her credit, Benatar started to sing “Someone To Watch Over Me” with just a soft piano accompaniment. After a few notes, people began to notice. After about 10 seconds, the audience fell silent. Her voice was like cut glass. That performance was like a scene out of a movie.
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How cool is that! I never had the pleasure of seeing her.
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Cool story
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Great story, Nancy. When you wrote about her passion for dance, an activity she engaged in at summer performing arts camp, I imagined a scene emerging from a summer camp in the Catskills and when her parents unlocked the door and walking into the penthouse I envisioned Patrick Swayze jumping out and saying, ”Nobody puts Baby in corner.”
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What a beautiful story. It powerfully captures that moment of inner awakening, when you decide to stop living for other people’s expectations and follow your true passion. I loved reading it.
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