I imagine every adopted person out there has, at one time or another, worked up a romantic fantasy about their origin. I've had a few - my strongest and most persistent theory is that I was fathered by Iggy Pop. Don't laugh. You don't know what you'd come up with if you had to invent a fantasy bio-dad. This one occurred to me because a few years ago - must've been his birthday or something - I heard his age and decided that that was just about the right age to have sired me. I liked the idea of some little groupie fan (pre-Stooges, but only by a little bit) turning up pregnant in the days before Roe v Wade and carrying to term her (unrequited) love child, giving it - me - up because she knew she could never raise me properly alone. Or maybe just because the Rolling Stones were getting together around that time and following them would be a lot easier unencumbered by a kid. Who knows? Anyway. All fantasy and conjecture, of course. Don't want Mr. Pop coming after me for slander. Ah, you see that? He even has Pop right in his name. You can SEE how a girl's thoughts might turn...
I am in the process of reading Patti Smith's autobiographical Just Kids. Ms. Smith, by the way, is such a beautiful writer that I think a new word needs to be invented for what the rest of us do, because it's just not fair to use the same word to describe this and that. Her writing exists on a completely separate plane. But I've digressed. In the opening chapters she talks about giving a baby up for adoption when she was nineteen. Do you know what a sentence like that DOES to a person who was adopted in the 60's? I love my Poppa Iggy, but Patti Smith? And with the added legitimacy of her actually having given up a child in the same era? I went positively weak in the knees. I didn't even need to work up a fantasy, she'd written it all out - and in words that read like art. I nearly wept. It was all too much.
I looked it up. Come on. You would've, too. Her child was a boy and he was born in 1965. I'm, um, a girl, and I was born in 1962. It was fun for a second or two, though.
Good news, Iggy. You're back in.
I am in the process of reading Patti Smith's autobiographical Just Kids. Ms. Smith, by the way, is such a beautiful writer that I think a new word needs to be invented for what the rest of us do, because it's just not fair to use the same word to describe this and that. Her writing exists on a completely separate plane. But I've digressed. In the opening chapters she talks about giving a baby up for adoption when she was nineteen. Do you know what a sentence like that DOES to a person who was adopted in the 60's? I love my Poppa Iggy, but Patti Smith? And with the added legitimacy of her actually having given up a child in the same era? I went positively weak in the knees. I didn't even need to work up a fantasy, she'd written it all out - and in words that read like art. I nearly wept. It was all too much.
I looked it up. Come on. You would've, too. Her child was a boy and he was born in 1965. I'm, um, a girl, and I was born in 1962. It was fun for a second or two, though.
Good news, Iggy. You're back in.
11 comments:
So what does it mean when you're NOT adopted and you still have those fantasies?
I've heard a lot of good things about Smith's book, and love your description, that her words read like art. That's a nice observation. I'll def have to check it out.
I was going to ask the same thing as MiMi, lol!
Wow, Iggy Pop for a dad. I guess if I were adopted I'd be hoping for someone cool too.
Love it. And I must check out that book. It sounds like a must read.
Aw man! I was really pulling for you to be Tammy Smith. Actually, you'd have to change the spelling of your name to Tammi. Yep. Tammi Smith.
I don't know.... Tammy Pop would be a tough name on the playground :-)
xoxo
Back to Iggy then...it would totally fit!
Patti Smith, Iggy Pop -- either would be lucky to have you!
But if you need more dreaming and fantasizing -- just look who was also born that same year as you -- http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/year/1962
Now who would you want your twin brother or sister to be from this list? Or who of these famous folks' parents could be yours, having switched you at birth?
I can see a new version of "Parent Trap" being formed right now but with rock and roll hipsters instead.
Keep dreamin' Tammy! Dream on!
So you are sure you are not a boy? Fine, Iggy it is.
Fun post!
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