Ball~Baby~Breastfeeding~Bliss
Could I have picked a better time to have a lil’ dude that the boys can wrestle with and Steve can show off? He’ll be born during football season when Brett Favre has decided to make his final Jay Z curtain call! I think this kid is trying to become the absolute favorite. He’s going to give Pop an excuse to buy more clothes, Steve will have someone to train and Me and My mom will have a football buddy! Could I have picked a worse time to bring a baby into the world? As we gingerly step out of a recession, fight over health care and racial tensions boil over in the land of the free, and a short dictator plays with nuclear rockets. The world is chaotic and its inhabitants are bitter, scared and frivolous. Why would I choose this time for him to come into existence? Feeling very deserving, undeserving, excited, nervous, ready, unprepared and blessed all at the same time.
Get here kid!! …Wait Wait Wait… not yet! This schizophrenic madness and complete amour is baffling and settling all at the same time. Steve and I will never have another birthday, holiday or weekend alone with no responsibilities ever again and yet… I’m not going to miss it. Careless, frivolous parties with rose colored champagne and broken heels from dancing the night away are not really missed. Beautiful times they were… wonderful times… but somehow they just don’t compare to kicking party taking place in my belly. Love Love Love is all I know now. Bottle service has a whole new meaning… not better, necessarily, but more fulfilling… for me, at least. Trading in the empty Moet bottle for an Advent 4 oz bottle makes me feel whole and brings more warmth than blazing inferno on a damp night.
This fall will bring cheers all around for me and my family… new and old. I can’t wait.
identity
I just hopped off of a telephone interview where someone asked me to describe myself. Describe where I am from and where I plan to go.
It got me thinking. I am my mother’s daughter and she is her mother’s daughter… essentially I am Cleonia. I am the fighter of preservation of family. I am unconditional love. I am creativity and productivity. I am warm and gently and affectionate. I am fire and fight.
My grandmother and I share heritage and a bond that started when she invited me and my mother back into her home on my fourth day here on this earth. My grandmother are of the same race, but not the same color and the only thing we physically share are the curves in our lips and full fledged belly laugh. But everything else I am is because of her. My ability to read and retain, my love of music and cinema, my love of culture, my adventurous spirit, my religious faith… all Cleonia. She fought to keep me in a dress and make up on my face…but she accepted my love for football and the need to play with my brothers and not the girls on the block. Our bond is envied by friends and foes alike… as some can’t even remember the smell of their grandmother’s kitchen.
So I suppose, when he asked me the question I should have answered that I am Valerie and Valerie is Cleonia and Cleonia is me.
The Angelinajoliehollyrobinsonpeete Effect
I am a woman. I am daughter. I am a sister. I am a partner. I am an artist. I am an assistant. I am in love.
There are so many facets to many young women today. We are the generation after the women’s intense movement, but we have brought so much technology and advancement to the work place that it would be a crime to go back to the kitchen and to our aprons. But how do we have it all?
Sometimes when I think about my future I see a vast open horizon ahead of me and it is exciting. Husband, Children, Production Company and Foundation. I am at the brink of my career taking a leap into the open air with no hesitation. But my heart and soul opened up this year and I found love. That lockdown, everlasting, comfortable, passionate love that I can’t seem to remember what bliss was before this. At 25, it seems as though my life is ready to make such a huge change. At 25, it seems I am closer to my directing debut and closer to my wedding day. At 25, I seem to have all the things that will make me great. Yet, at 25 I am having trouble balancing it all. At 25, I can’t seem to make anyone directly effected by my actions happy. At 25, I feel like I am failing.
Could it be that the women like my Mother, Angelina Jolie and Holly Robinson Peete who have full fledge active successful careers, at least four children and their own businesses/foundations are just annomilies. Can I never be that superwoman because she doesn’t exist? Is she as rare as a Mozart, Picasso, Einstein?? Was I too arrogant to think that I too could have it all, including the hot body??
