Each Moment Of Our Life And Patches Of Many Articles For One Year Elita Sohmer Clayman

Each moment of your life is like a picture which you have never seen before and which you will never see again. Enjoy and live it. Make each moment of your life beautiful These are lovely words (not mine) which we can all abide by each and every day.

I know what you are thinking. She surely does preach like she is a clergy person of each faith. That is a funny thought because in about 1978, I had a volunteer job of editing the Rabbi’s sermons with the goal of him getting them published in a book. I would sit every night on my king size bed and go over at least one sermon from the past and try to edit things out of it that were not current thoughts. I felt very important being chosen to do this volunteer work. Finally, after about six months, he and I met and he decided to seek a publisher. This is very hard to do and the next thought was to get it published by what was called a vanity press. That meant that you paid them to publish your writings, they did and they tried to publicize your new book. They put them in bookstores on a consignment basis and if they sold well, you received profits which helped to give you money back for your original payment to them. It had become a popular way to get published and some even may have made some money on the deal.

He became ill and the project was stopped. I was sad because I had given him my suggestion on the title. It would have been called Life And Also A Little More. I thought it a real cute and dear title.  He passed on and I gave his widow the rest of the edited sermons, I had finished before he passed away.

When I was working on this for him and with him; I had this feeling that I was maybe, a bit closer to God by doing this for a man of God. So this in a way was a picture which I had never seen before and which I would never see again. I did enjoy the tedious work of reading, reviewing, revising and reworking lots of things in his written words. They were excellent expressions of a man who was kind, considerate and really believed in the goodness of mankind. I did not wear eye glasses then as I do now for reading. It was hard on the eyes, especially, when I did the editing in the late evening hours.

Now I have my own many writings and some have said I should put them all in a book, maybe two sections, the articles encouraging people to ballroom dance in one part of the book and my stories of life when I was a child, a teen, newly married and now as a senior. This is a lot of work and I probably will never do it, but who knows? Thoughts of grandeur and being recognized as a writer are always in all of us writers or journalists’ minds. Everyone wants to see their name in print. Dad use to say, just make sure they spell your (our) name right.

My niece had that happen once. She is a doctor and went to a seminar weekend in Canada, I believe. There were no computers then or if they had them, they were not working like they are now. She flew in and they could not find her reservation and she had a confirmation number and that did not help too.

She stood there for an hour while they searched and there were no other rooms in any hotels there because of this doctor convention/seminar weekend. What was she to do? Finally, out of her educated mind, she said to the clerk; see if the letters of the last name Sohmer were reversed. They looked and there it was in black and white. Sh- instead of- So. She got into her room, a bit agitated over the loss of time and energy.

Dad was right, they have to spell your name right. I have the other thing that happens to me. Half of the people I meet and who I am involved with mispronounce my first name. It is E-lee-ta.The t is a t and not a d. You would be surprised what I get called and after a while of correcting the person, he or she, says it correctly for the first ten minutes and then they revert back to mispronouncing it. Oh well, it is spelled right, but pronounced wrong. We cannot have everything done accurately, can we?

All of my four grandchildren at the age of three could pronounce it correctly. I have a theory that the more educated the person, the worse he speaks my name. There was Evita who ran a country; there was Lolita who was a slut. I wonder if their names were pronounced wrong too. I use to say I was Elita who was the boring one out of the three ladies named with ‘ita’ on the end. I am not boring, I am a writer for the Patch and that is enough notoriety for me.

Anyway, Elita wrote her first column for Cockeysville.Patch.com (now known as HuntValley-Cockeysville Patch) on July 18^th, 2011. So when you read this, it will be July 18^th 2012 and where did the year go?

It was called a Blade of Grass and today’s column will be called Each Moment Of Your Life. So my blade of grass grew into a big garden of moments, happenings, ballroom dancing stories, stories on my life as a kid, teen, married person, mom, mother-in-law, grandparent and an active, adult, senior citizen.  I watered my blade of grass into a patch and it blossomed, grew and is lovely.

My names are always spelled right as Dad would say, my readers respond well to the stories, my fans write me and I have many more readers/fans in the past year. I do not really need to bother to put the articles into a book, because I am happy with whoever is reading them and hopefully enjoying them and maybe seeing their self in my writings about life, family, friends and also about the sayings I gather for themes for these stories.

These stories are now my Life And Also A Little More; and they have become a way of life for me now as a senior of seventy-eight. Thank you HuntValley-Cockeysville.Patch.com for having me write for you, to Nayana Davis, its excellent editor and to the public who can identify with me, my  past, my senior years, my grandkids, marriage, and even maybe ballroom dancing. This is my 210^th article as of this writing.

They say the grass is always greener somewhere else. That is a very old saying. It does not apply here. The Patch grass is green enough for me; there are no weeds in it to be picked out. There is only beauty of the Patch and I love how it is growing. I am proud to be a contributor/journalist and may it always flourish every day of the year. Another appropriate saying to end this article is “some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful. I hope I have helped do the latter, because it surely has made my place beautiful, this whole year from July 18^th 2011 until July 18^th 2012.