In the human soup, there are parents who reject their children, and there are children who reject their parents. Either is, or at least can be, a recipe for deep irreversible pain and anguish. The advice of psychologists for the victims of such unfortunate circumstances often boils down to one thing: get on with your life.
As destiny would have it, Nancy’s calling as a creative artist lead her to some of the greatest musicians of her time. Jimi Hendrix was truly a friend. Nancy saw Jimi as a peer, and by all indications the feeling was mutual. But more about this in coming blog posts.
Before Nancy met Jimi, she met his general manager, Michael Jeffery. A romance blossomed…..both for better and for worse….but please wait for this experience to be blogged in the near future. Before she met either, Nancy learned that because of an ovarian problem (she doesn’t identify it specifically, or clarify the cause in her memoir), she would be unable to have children.
She had just learned one year earlier that her real father, my father, wanted to have nothing to do with her. To have no father to speak of was like not being able to claim a past. To have no children, was to be denied a future. Nancy realized she was stuck in the middle, in the present? She made the most of it, for a while at least.
That wing that unfolds behind you, the length of your family. And that other great span of wing that extends out before you, your children and theirs. I’ll never have that. So what am I? My lineage was snipped off at both ends. I was an ancestral amputee.
I floated as loosely in space as a baby tooth.
I get kind of queasy when I think of my family tree.
It seemed to have some sort of animation that trees shouldn’t have
I needed a phone booth.
It was time to call the doctor about my test results.
I found a pharmacy on the corner of an uptown cross-street that had a glass phone booth right inside the entry.
The doctor told me I need surgery on my ovaries.
I was just seventeen. You know what I mean?
When I stepped out on the sidewalk, I felt a wave of nausea.
I never felt that before so I knew, I knew, this was BIG.
It wasn’t the operation that scared me. It was the precognition: “I’m never going to be able to have children.”
I had just learned a year ago that I never had a father.