Pass the cheese and a birth mother, please

It was the winter of 1996, and The Mountain Girl and I were snowshoeing through Tokopah Valley, a stunning glacially carved gem at about 8,000 feet up in the Sierra Nevada of Sequoia National Park.

The only people we came across that day were a couple of Germans hiking in the waist-deep snow in jeans and hiking boots. (Truly a stupid idea.) So we had this pristine, snowy wilderness to ourselves. Which is probably a good thing, because along the way, we were making ourselves look stupid, ungracefully climbing over logs, falling down in little dips in the trail and generally laughing at ourselves so much that our echoes might have started an avalanche.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped to eat. This was the first time I'd been out on a trail with The Mountain Girl, and I'll never forget when she opened her knapsack and started pulling out the food. She handed me a bottle of wine and asked me to open it. Then out came a nice fat wedge of brie, a crisp apple, some hearty crackers. Heaven help me, I think there might have even been an olive tapenade.

I had never seen trail food like it, and I said as much.

"I've never understood," TMG replied, "why people bring crap out onto the trail. Why would you bring the stuff you wouldn't otherwise eat? And when you're in a place like this," (here, she gestured up at the granite cliffs towering over us, the green boughs of the cedars and ponderosa pines jutting out of the snowy landscape, the dry snowflakes drifting down upon us), "why on earth would you want to eat anything but *good* food?"

I hadn't known TMG all that long. Perhaps two years before, I'd interviewed her for a newspaper story, but it wasn't until we met at a mutual friend's New Year's Eve party that we'd started to socialize. Mainly at a coffeehouse. Mainly early in the morning with other mutual friends, mainly Shall Be Revered, connecting us.

Until this moment in Tokopah Valley, I had thought TMG perfectly nice but rather aloof, almost masculine in the devil-may-care, detached way that she conducted her relationships. I knew her to be a woman who could carry on rather unconventional relationships with men, the kind of now-and-again things that lots of men dream about having but that many women disdain or don't have the emotional fortitude to maintain.

But here she was, cutting up an apple with her camping knife, smearing the wedge with stinky cheese and waxing rhapsodic about the intersection of nature and food. The romantic in her was starting to show itself. After a couple cups of wine in that air -- the same air John Muir once said "the angels breathe" -- The Mountain Girl softened up considerably, started to get philosophical on more than just politics, told me all sorts of interesting things about her life and her many loves.

I never did become one of the *legion* of lesbians hopelessly in love with this rugged straight girl, but seeing her in a different light that day was the start of my coming to love her. And it sparked a curiosity within me: Just why didn't she get attached? Why didn't she fall in love? Why keep everyone at arm's length? (My parting words to her when I moved up to Portland were, Fall in love some time. She replied, smiling, "I fall in love all the time." I politely bit my tongue and did not dispute that.)

It may be a massive projection on my part, a grotesque misdiagnosis, a shallow interpretation of the situation, but I did wonder for many years if it was because she was adopted. I have witnessed a similar -- albeit exceptionally fucked up -- lack of attachment within my mother, who is also adopted, so this is probably why I connected the dots in that fashion.

During the time I lived down in California, TMG spoke to me several times about her adoption and a curiosity about her birth parents. Somewhere along the way, a sympathetic clerk in the Hall of Records in the town where TMG was born slipped her the undoctored version of her birth certificate. This is where she gleaned her mother's name. But TMG never did anything with it, never tried to find the woman. Not even after both of her adoptive parents died.

Then, a couple months ago, SBR and TMG were sitting in the coffeehouse -- more a rare occurence these days than back when all of us were seeing each other there daily -- and SBR asked, "Did you ever look up your birth mother?" TMG said no, and SBR wanted to know why not. She got a shrug in reply and some words to the effect that TMG didn't know what to do with the information.

SBR has always been a take-action kind of woman. And she also seems quite happy in the role of caretaker for her family and friends. (She used to iron my clothes at times....) So when SBR reported to me what she did here, I was not surprised. Very simply: She told TMG to give her whatever information she had about her birth parents. Then off she went, and presently returned with some news. TMG's birth mother was dead, but SBR had found the birth father.

TMG felt awkward about calling him or taking any other action. So SBR continued to step in, making contact with Birth Father, who is 72 or 73 and was unaware he'd ever fathered a child. Even though, as it turns out, he had been married to Birth Mother for several years. Not surprisingly, Birth Father was skeptical. He and Birth Mother had been together prior to TMG's birth, but had broken up for a year or so and weren't married until a year after TMG was born 45 years ago.

Faced with some facts, however, Birth Father was curious enough about the situation to agree to a DNA test. But he didn't want to take it until after he met TMG. Both of them were nervous about it, so SBR continued to facilitate the process, agreeing to go to lunch with them when Birth Father was in town last week for a business meeting. SBR says she had no problem recognizing Birth Father in the restaurant. And Birth Father had no difficulty recognizing TMG. "You look just like your mother," he said upon seeing her.

Sitting there at the table, he pulled out an old wedding photo and gave it to TMG. SBR reported, "As soon as she saw that photo, TMG started to cry. If it had been a movie, you couldn't have cued the waterworks any more perfectly."

I was astounded when I heard this. Not by the fact that someone would cry upon meeting Birth Father and seeing a photo of Birth Mother, who has been dead nearly 10 years. Of course, someone would cry. But TMG? I'm having trouble picturing it. I learned a long time ago that she has emotions, but still... I can't quite imagine it. It would have, no doubt, been a powerful thing to witness.

I talked to TMG the other night about all of this, and she was characteristically reserved. "I think it's cool; I've been curious about this for a long time," she said. "But as I told Birth Father, I've got no agenda here. I don't have some kind of deep wound I need healed. I don't need any money. I don't have any desire for a big relationship. I'm just curious. If SBR hadn't been pursuing this, I would never have met him. I guess we'll just see what happens." All the way up here in Portland, I could see the shrug.

I am, however, happy to report that TMG is not so distant in her love relationships as she used to be. Here at 45, she is in love for the first time in her life. This relationship has been going on for perhaps two years, and TMG is serious about it. The only catch: The guy lives in Australia.

Distance comes in many forms. But on this one, she's thinking about closing the gap.