Make Yourself A Promise And Promise To Live By It Elita Sohmer Clayman

Listen to your soul. It is the only voice you need to listen to and is the one deep in your soul. If you do, you will know that you are loved and that your dreams are there for you to live. I wish that I had written that, I read it and loved it.

When I was a kid, we always listened to our parents. I use to think that my dad was the smartest man I knew and then I thought my brother was the most intelligent young man I knew. Mom was the gentle one, always with encouraging thoughts and ideas. She had grown up and they were very poor. She was one of seven kids; two were blind and one deaf. Her dad died very young and her mom was a widow at forty-eight years.

They had a small grocery store and lived above or behind it as all small grocers did in those days. They managed fine and even had a dog named Pal. Every day at three p.m., he would go out the open door and walk to the bus stop and await my mom, who was his favorite child in the family. As she got off the bus, she and Pal walked together to their grocery store home.

He was a smart dog to sense the time when Leah was arriving home. Mom in turn had to take her blind brother and sister back to the Maryland School for the Blind every Sunday night. They came home for the weekend; I do not know who came for them to bring them home for those two days. It was Mom’s duty or chore to accompany Ruth and George on the streetcar, all the way from downtown Baltimore to the school in Overlea, Maryland. Then she deposited them safely and made the journey back home.

They got their education there and when it was time for high school, each went to a seeing high school which was quite extraordinary in those days of about 1925. He went to Baltimore City College High School and she went to the school across the street, Eastern High School which was for girls only. How they got there and home, I do not know, but they did and both excelled there. The story goes that each were the first blind people to graduate a ‘seeing’ school in those days. Neither walked with a white can. How they managed, is a mystery to me, but a wonderful and inspiring time in the lives of the people who shared knowing them in high school.

It shows that everyone can be stimulated and everyone can accomplish and succeed, no matter what is out there trying to hold them back.

Mom use to tell George that she loved him so much now, but it sure was a chore she had to do and did kind of willingly most of the time, but sometimes it was a real burden riding the streetcar such a distance with two blind youngsters and then making the return trip alone. It must have been about thirty miles each way from where they lived in the neighborhood now called Little Italy all the way out to the suburbs in those days. It probably was in the country area of the county with not a lot of residential homes nearby.

Mom and George and Ruth were very devoted to each other and us kids to them too. We did not see them as handicapped per se; we saw them as two delightful relatives who charmed us with their personalities and intelligence.

Here is another beautiful piece of writing, not my words, but surely my thoughts.

Promise yourself

To be strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind

To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet

To make all your friends feel that there is something in them

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true

To think only the best, to work only for the best and expect only the best.

To be enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

It would be hard not to love these sentiments. You can try to heed the thoughts as much as you are able to do.

Another one I saw recently said “Smile, let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday.”

When we started out as dancers in 1977, there were lots of the above thoughts mentioned that were not adhered to by some of the seasoned dancers. They would come up to people and try to show them things they were doing wrong in the dancing, they were attempting. They did not mean it in a kind way, they often said it in a demeaning way and that scared lots of folks from coming back to the studio. There were of course, the kinder ones, who saw that you wanted to learn this hobby with grace and confidence and they tried to instill in you, more self-assurance, courage and faith. They felt there was a need for optimism, so you would continue on and not feel you were unable to go on. These were the good do-ers as I called them and I appreciated when they would encourage us that someday soon, we would be great dancers. Then when I became a ‘great dancer”, I in return did the same thing for the new people. I felt you had to make someone feel there is something in them that can overcome any problems and they could see the sunny side of their eventual knowledge.

I do that in all my dance columns and all my life columns because that is me. I always encouraged my children, husband and even Mom when she could not do the usual things she always had done because of older age being her side kick. Mom was encouraged to go on trips to Spain, Israel, a cruise, California and wherever she had the courage to attempt. That way, her life was full at senior age and being a widow.

We should all think well of our self and look at the sunny side and make optimism a fact in our daily hours.

This makes life interesting, happier and even perhaps healthier, when we have things to anticipate all the time. We should try to live with the faith that if we are good people and we exude goodness, that goodness will be with us and the others, we see in our everyday life will have it too. That is a commendable way to live.