Letter(s) to My Unfinished Business
A transcript from Women of Letters, read live at The Zoo, Sunday 8 May, 2016
A transcript from Women of Letters, read live at The Zoo, Sunday 8 May, 2016
Dear Robert,
I have always harboured a fantasy that you, Robert Plant, are my father. Larger than life, dead sexy, wild, passionate and free.
You were free to roam the world with that voice, that hair, all that denim — specifically to roam Australia in roughly 1970, and impregnate a fan and father an Australian love child, a daughter — me.
I fantasise we’ll meet at an awards ceremony one day, you will look into my eyes and recognise something familiar and finally claim me as your daughter.
Yes, Robert you are my fantasy father.
Dear Dad,
You were the kindly, patient, quiet man from suburban Brisbane that adopted a little baby girl from a Catholic unwed mothers hospital in Bundaberg, Queensland, February 1971.
I accept you loved me, provided my education and did your very best.
You are at peace now from the cancer that ate you away, slowly, over many years.
Thank you Dad, you were my practical father.
Dear Ghost of a Father,
I have always known I was adopted, no big secret just something that “is the way it is”.
I never felt I belonged where fate plonked me down in the northern suburbs of Brisbane in the early 70’s. I pushed the boundaries, had a wild imagination and sought any connection and escape. Boys, alcohol, marijuana, music and work.
Leaving home as soon as practicable at 18 I chased freedom, passion and any sense of connection. I found it in the people and lifestyle that a career close to music offered and I learnt to work, bloody hard.
In 1990 the 1964 Adoption Act was amended and that allowed access to my “identifying information”. It was game on. I immediately applied for my original birth certificate and started to search for answers to the relentless questions. Who is my mother? Who is my father ? Do I have brothers and sisters? Where do I come from? Who am I ?
It took a few years and with thanks to the Salvation Army Missing Persons program I finally found my birth mother in 1995. Hooray, a piece of the puzzle solved!
Alas, nothing was forthcoming about you dear ghost of a father. No name on a birth certificate — just a sense of a secret, a whiff of shame, perhaps a broken heart. Half of me was to remain a mystery, I never stopped yearning for my full story. For a sense of wholeness.
Life went on. Marriage, illness, children, business success, failures, touring, parties, the great joy and pain of a life lived.
Dad passed away at 1 minute past midnight on the 1st June 2014 — I was side of stage at a Kingswood gig. I was held in the arms of live music that night and the masculinity of rock and roll once again comforted me.
The next year I was consumed with the confronting process of de-cluttering a family home of 50 years and putting an elder, my adoptive mother, in to care.
That is when I found the note - buried in a plastic bag of newspaper clippings, recipes and other debris of decades of domestic, suburban life.
Dear Father,
You existed and here is how I understand my story:
Thankfully, I was not conceived through violence or non consensual sex. I was conceived on a tenement of the sexual revolution — the one night stand!
It was April 1970, Southport on the Gold Coast after a night out dancing at a music gig with friends. With freedom, consent and connection a baby was made, late one lust-filled Saturday night. (I choose to believe the record playing at the time was Led Zeppelin II.)
You were leaving town and had moved on by the following Tuesday. Perhaps to North Queensland or wherever the next building contract work would take you.
I also now know your name, Steve. No surname is recalled, just Steve. Green eyes, solid build, longish hair and an interest in music.
Dear Steve,
You certainly did finish your business that night. I am grateful to you for that climax — it has given me this life.
However, you do not know I exist. We will never look in each other’s eyes, hug, argue, listen to music or go for a beer and a chat at the pub — although I think you would like that if we could. I would.
I won’t ever know my complete bloodline — my genetics, my extended family or your touch.
I do know myself better having wrestled with the ghost of you. Longing for you and feeling your absence during the big moments of my life, in music and in my relationships with men. I have learned to accept myself for who I am. Right here, right now at 45 years old I have a right to be seen, to be heard, to live my life.
I know I am not alone. I imagine there are many, many children of fathers that do not know they exist.
I accept our unfinished business and I will always listen to Robert Plant when I need to feel close to your spirit.
Lots of Love,
The daughter you will never know.