Active Adults Riding On The Wheels Of A Dream Elita Sohmer Clayman

My dear friend in Seattle, Washington shared with me the following. “I know you are excited about the coming weekend in particular the 9th of June. That is my youngest son’s birthday too. I wanted to share a verse from a song that I experienced yesterday in a concert at Benaroya Hall here in Seattle. The Seattle Symphony led by Marvin Hamlisch with Brian Stokes Mitchell performed songs from the American Songbook. I am still high from the concert. One of the songs from the Broadway Show Ragtime linked me to you knowing how your creative mind   is stimulated from verses. It was:
 we will ride on the wheels of a dream. Enjoy your wonderful evening of dancing and were I there, you would be first on my list of invitations to dance.  Steven”

He is talking about me being an observer/reviewer of a dance competition on Saturday evening June 9th at the Pikesville Hilton, which I wrote about in one of my latest articles called Some Enchanted Evening.

The following is a quote from Steven on what he does for a living.

“My wellness background is the result of my Master’s degree study in Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. I have tailored my efforts to senior adults with the goal of changing the designation to "active adults". Besides the dancing, a lot of my time is devoted to improving one’s physical balance and recovery from falls. This includes a lot of preventive type presentations and practical work. You know that we don't think about prevention until we experience the accident. As you can see, dancing and falls prevention fit nicely into a coordinated package.”

This is a fine combination of a devoted senior who dances, teaches dance and is also a medically involved person, who calls us seniors’ active adults. This is a nice description of us and suits us better than seniors. Seniors are what my number two grandson becomes in a few weeks when school is over for the summer. He will be a senior in high school.

We will ride on the wheels of a dream is something we can all incorporate into our daily life. Everyone has dreams and riding on the wheels of them is a catchy phrase from the show Ragtime. It does not matter if we are eighteen or eighty; there are still lots of time to mobilize our self into making the dreams a reality.

There are lots of reality shows encompassing losing weight shows, vocalists trying out to become an established singer, dancing shows that reveal different types of dancing other than ballroom which Steven and I are involved in. There are even reality shows where workers in a hair salon compete to become the top hair stylist; where interior designers compete to get a design job in a big home event; where cooks compete to become the chief chef in a fancy restaurant. All of these people are stimulated to gain rewards for their talents and even many who do not measure up to the highest point still try.

Mahatma Gandhi said “The future depends on what we do in the present.” How true that is.Another saying is “today is a gift that is why we call it the present.”

The present we receive from our self is that we try to do something we have never done before. We may get nervous thinking about transporting our self into a different mode of living. We think and think and put it off.

When I decided in late October of 1977 that I wanted us to take dance lessons, I called up several studios to talk to someone about the price, time and any deals they may have offered. I chose one that I thought would suit us in the best possible way. All that day of the first lesson on November 2nd 1977, I eagerly anticipated this new event in my life. My husband came home from work and was not too thrilled about going there, but I persevered and since he had not worked a full day, I felt he would be ready for this delightful journey.

We went there and I anticipating lots of fun and hard work and him anticipating being bored, tired and uninterested. The one hour lesson turned out to be quite stimulating and the young teacher assigned to us by the name of Laurence E. Miller was the right person to be able to ‘handle’ a man of forty-seven, who did not want to really be there that night. He did not have any trouble with me at age forty-three, because I was a willing and eager participant.

We survived and even kind of had fun trying to absorb all we had learned and we went to dinner at a nice local restaurant and ate in the room there called The Hunt Room. It seemed to be apropos to the situation .We were ‘hunting’ for this hobby, at least I was.

Steven is an avid, ardent, enthusiastic and accomplished dancer and he encourages everyone to dance and to be happy and well doing it.

He rides on the wheels of his dreams in Seattle, Washington and I do the same here in Baltimore County, Maryland.

May all of my readers ride on the wheels of their dreams and come to their destination from this trip with happiness, good physical and mental health and most of all be content.

Thank you Steven Behr, Sr. for being my friend, my dance confidant, my email pal and most of all for encouraging me to continue on inspiring everyone to dance. I do it with words and you do it with actions. We both are riding on the wheels of our dreams and doing quite well as active adults.