Love Is Having Two Hearts Elita Sohmer Clayman

Love is many things. We love for our first love, our parents. We see early on that they take care of us, wait on us, teach us, give us food, buy us gifts, forgive us, heal us, listen to us and most of all, be there for us, no matter where we are, have been and will be.

They give us unconditional love and we accept it because we need them, want them and realize that we love them. When your little one says to you one day early in their life, when they have learned to express them self, “I love you Mommie”, then and only then, do you know what love is.

There is a good saying (not mine, wish I had thought of it first)  God gave us everything in pairs-two hands, two eyes, two ears, two feet. But why only one heart? Because he gave another one to someone else for us to go find.

When we have a sibling, whether they are older or younger than us, we learn to love them. If we are older when they arrive, than we think that maybe they are stepping on our territory and maybe for a week or two, we resent them. Finally, one day, we realize at that young age, that we have a new friend, a playmate, a pal and we know that we do love them early on. Next comes the friends’ stage when we learn to appreciate and eventually love a buddy and they become our dear and devoted friend and we love them in a companion love way. Then we go on and we may love our profession or our work and then one day, we find someone of the opposite sex and we realize we may be learning to love them too.

It has been said that love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Some people love to read, to crochet, to knit, to vacation, to ski, to golf, to dance, to cook, to write, to eat, to do hobbies, to watch TV, to go to the theater, but all have one thing in common, they love it.

I use to worry when I was growing up, what if something happened to Mom or Dad, how would I survive? I did not think about if I would be having food prepared for me, or laundry done or money to spend, I thought how would I live without their love? I was thirty when Dad died and fifty when Mom died. I knew then that I could survive, because I was a mom myself and so I had three people to love a lot, my husband and my two children. Of course, they did not take the place of my dear folks; they were the other loves in my life.

When I was twenty years old, I became an aunty for the first time and that was pretty young to be one, though I had a friend who was an aunty at about eleven, because there was a lot of age difference between her and her sister. I loved this baby girl with a passion, I bought her lots of toys and clothes and when I got married, she was six years old and she was a flower girl in my wedding. That was an aunty kind of love.

As you well know, I love ballroom dancing and all that it entails and I have a vanity license plate that says Dancing on it. When I first got it, in about 1991, a new neighbor came over and said “what does that dancing on your plate mean?” I thought you silly old guy (now I am the old gal) it means I love dancing and I love to advertise it, so everyone knows I dance.

Now my son had to borrow my car until his new automobile is ready for pickup and he is using the dancing car. He has had a few comments made to him when he stops and gets out of it. They wonder why does a young fellow, he is forty-seven, have dancing on his car plate. One man at a gas station made that comment and he replied, my mom is a dancer, I am borrowing her car. Funny that someone would make a comment. I see plates that say really unusual and maybe you could say stupid phrases. I have seen: have fun me, health nut, babysitter, 1234567,losshubby,voila, 4kids, 3rdhubby, tiredme,love2shop,timeout,golfnut,goldluv,bye2yu,singer,dancer, dancin,luv2dnce.applepie, and hello all. All of them mean something to the car owner. The 3^rd hubby one is bragging I guess, she got three husbands. The loss hubby is that she lost her husband either in death or he left. The cutest one I have seen is lifeisgood. Also, Iworknites.

So life is good, even if I work nights, being a health nut is healthy living, singing, dancing, golfing, having fun and loving to shop is happiness too.

Love is like the sun coming out of the clouds and warming your soul is another example of someone smart saying this and to him or her I say my original line which is: when you love your husband/wife, and the children now and your parents if gone, the love you had then for them and perhaps a sibling or more, than you have had the many splendored thing and you are so fortunate that you were given the opportunities to love them and in return, be loved back. Then as Tevye  said in Fiddler On The Roof, a play that has withstood time for over thirty-five years, I am a rich, rich man.

We have only one heart in order for us to find that special someone and then we have their heart too, and ours is their second heart. So we do have the two of everything eyes, ears, feet, hands and now two hearts.

We are rich as can be as Tevye said and if we wanted to, could have Rich Now on our vanity plate.