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Health & Fitness

A Dream At A Now Age From An Active Adult Senior (Me) Elita Sohmer Clayman

A dream from a senior (me) to get back to my beloved ballroom dancing after not doing it for a year due to an achy and bad knee. Dreams are sure nice especially when we are awake.

My dream is to of course be healthy and also for my husband, children and grandchildren. The Jewish New Year is approaching in five weeks, where did the year go? We all hope that our friends and family and everyone we know and also do not know, have a very healthy and happy year. It is the year of 5773.

My next wish is a simple one. It seems easy, but not for me. I want to ballroom dance again. I have not danced since last October 23, 2011 and before that on June 27, 2010. All of this not dancing is due to an auto accident on June 18, 2008 and also some real achy Arthritic knees. Actually, it is only one knee.

I am now on a regimen of physical therapy. My therapist, Cheryl Conrad of Spine and Sports in Timonium seems to think that I might be able to dance once again. If I can go to a Sunday social dance and dance five dances during the whole two to three hours I will be there; I will count myself quite a lucky old senior and then I will be as my friend Steven Behr says, not a senior, but an active adult.

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Yeah to Steven for such positive thinking. He says and they, the orthopedic doctor, the physical therapist, the internal physician assistant, Dennis H. Myers and my heart and soul, that I will pop in one day at the dance on Sunday afternoons and surprise the owner of the studio, Cindy Sumida and all my friends there that we have not seen for almost a year. When I was there last October, we danced only about four times for four dances; but I felt so rich that I had even accomplished that.

So I am working on my stationary bike, my exercises given to me by Cheryl for home doing, my machine exercises at the therapy place and everything they tell me to do. I am faithful to it.They say I will strengthen the muscles and I will be stronger and maybe in this coming new year starting on September 16th, I will be so proud of my attaining once again, my beloved ballroom dancing into my life. Sometimes, when I come home from there, I hurt even more than when I went there. That is par for the course and it eases up later on in the day and or the next day. I go faithfully there and see others perhaps in worse condition than me from other problems. Some people have had knee replacement, which I am trying not to do; some may have been recovering from that and need the physical therapy to get stronger, some have had accidents like I did and sometimes, someone is getting over a stroke. Everyone seems to be happy to be there to be able to get better. I am no exception.

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We have to do what we need to do to be well. In the old days, when you had Arthritis or back trouble, you sat and rested. Now you must do exercising and strengthening work at home and at the therapy location.

It is good for the mind too to have this as a side to getting better and if we can abide by what we are taught there, they we have overcome some of the obstacles facing us. My second dream is to be able to walk part of a mall. I want to be able to walk, look in the stores, not have to sit down to rest, but to travel the mall for a while, then rest, then eat, then shop, then buy and then be able to get to our car and not be too exhausted. Of course, the first time, will be tiring, but as I progress with the P.T., I will be able to enjoy a mall visit. If only, I do half or one third of the mall walking, that will be a new journey for me. A journey in a mall will be a ball, I will feel so tall, I will not fall and most of all, and I saw, all that I have not seen for many months, almost a year. This will make me want to shout and call everyone and then, I will be able to go to the dance hall. This will be a great ‘all’ to me, to have accomplished it all!

Some of us dream of yachts, winning the Olympics, owning a Mercedes, taking a cruise, flying to Europe, owning a large home with a swimming pool, being very slender, having lots of fun, being a grandparent, going to a big party, eating lots of sweets and desserts and still being slender, writing a book, going to the World Series or the Super Bowl, making lots of money and of course good and lingering health. We all want some of these or a few of them that is for sure.

After some of them, I want to dance again and ultimately go with my dance coach, John Dawson here in Baltimore to a dance competition next June. This June I was a journalist there and watched some events and wrote my thoughts on them in two columns here in my HuntValley-Cockeysville. Patch. Com. Next year in 2013(thirteen can be a lucky number); I want to be a participant, not a viewer.

If I continue my P.T. and I am successful, perhaps in 2013, corresponding to the year of 5773, I will make it, accomplish it and most of all know that I as a senior, active adult did it. This is what I wish for all the seniors who think in the old mode, that they have to sit, watch TV, and not move their bodies too much, because they ache anyway; that they take the health advisers’ advice, to be active and more active. That exercise extends our lives along with healthy eating (you can have a nosh now and then of something sweet and delightful) and that you keep your mind active with reading, writing, sports if you can attempt them like dancing or golf or tennis, and become more social. They say, the experts that being in a social atmosphere is good food for the brain and it help to keep the mind and soul content and healthy.

So here is to New Years of any kind or religion, to help us all to achieve, fulfill and realize our dreams and to have most of all, as good of health we can have. We should never give up on our aspirations, dreams and desires, regardless of our NOW AGE (known as NA) because we will prosper more in our NA, if we try to do new things in our realm of life. Our NA is really necessary action on our part to transform our lives into doing active, energy, lively and spirited things each and every day. Now as we age, we are still special people, a bit older, but still with ideas, thoughts, desires, health and looking forward to days of happiness, fun and enrichment of our lives.

Ballroom dancing, here I come, look out all you dancers, Elita and Jerry are arriving soon to a place near you, The Promenade in Woodlawn, one Sunday afternoon real soon, hopefully in September 2012. Then, she will fulfill her dream of being back to ballroom dancing at her NA along with Jerry and they will be back in their ‘second home’, the dance hall/studio, to show that they are still active adults at the NA and feeling pretty darn happy to back again.

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