A Quote by Claudia Jessie
My family were so poor. My mum would clean houses to maybe get me to a ballet class, bless her.
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My earliest memory is of sitting at Mum's dance school, watching her teach a ballet class.
I was the fifth child in a family of six, five boys and one girl. Bless that poor girl. We were very poor; it was the 30s. We survived off of the food and the little work that my father could get working on the roads or whatever the WPA provided. We were always in line to get food. The survival of our family really depended on the survival of the other black families in that community. We had that village aspect about us, that African sense about us. We always shared what we had with each other. We were able to make it because there was really a total family, a village.
My mum, Doris, was a source of unalloyed love. She lived for her family and would literally give you her last pound. I think she's made me a kinder person, because I think: Do I want to help this person? If my mum was around, she would have.
I don't think my mum ever understood my love of Doctor Who. Surely her strongest memory would have been me, standing at the top of the stairs, crying about how the "jelly men" were going to get me? Sorry, Mum, for those sleepless nights, but it was with good reason they called it Terror of the Zygons.
My love of music comes from as long as I remember. I begged my mum to learn piano for a year when I was 4; she wanted to make sure I was serious, and I wanted to be Chuck Berry when I grew up! We were a very musical family; my mum would play guitar, and her, my dad and aunt would sing and harmonize!
Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.
My mum would take us to ballet, and we used to go as a family to Brownies. My dad used to take us to Saturday music school. My parents would never say: 'Oh, you've got to practice your violin now before tea.' We were self-motivated.
My mum said she remembers me asking her if she'd take me to ballet lessons when I was about two and a half. She said I could barely speak, and yet was asking for ballet lessons.
We were what you would call a poor family, but we were rich in so many things. We did family things together. We always had dessert, even if it was just Jell-O. So, I never knew I was poor.
My family was artistic and encouraged me to express myself. I was a show-off, so they took me to ballet class.
My teacher told my mum, 'I think William has dyspraxia,' and Mum asked what that meant. She said, 'Well, if I put a chair in the middle of the room and asked every child in the class to walk around it, William would be the only child in the class to walk into it.' Mum was like, 'Yeah, that's my boy'.
My poor mum had a lot of problems with me around that time. I was young but I'd been working for years, so if she asked me to clean my room I'd say, 'You can't tell me what to do after I've worked a 12-hour day.' It gave me a power that no one that age should have.
I've always loved makeup. I'm very, very girly. I used to sit and watch my mum get ready. My mum is very glamorous, and I remember sitting on her bed and watching her apply her makeup, get dressed, and do her hair.
It was just me and my mum growing up, and my mum's always said that's why I'm so mature. We were best friends, and if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't even have started athletics, because she wanted me to have a hobby.
My mum was a dancer. She would tour the world with a group, and she had me in a dance class when I was still in a nappy. They told her to come back when I could walk.
My mum is a fashion inspiration to me. She always goes to great lengths to get ready in the morning, from her hair to her makeup to her nails, and matching her suit with her shoes.
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