Telling

We went as far as we could to the top of the mountain that dominates the backdrop of my birth family’s life. On the edge of their house, their church, their work, the snow-streaked crag of Pikes Peak rises majestically against a deep blue sky. My birth mother and I had caught the cog train in Manitou Springs, riding as far as we could, just past Inspiration Point. At the summit, the winds were whipping over 120 m.p.h. When the train paused before it began its trek back down the mountain, the sky seemed to grow even bluer, and a sharp wind shot a mist of fine snow through the open window and onto our legs. My birth mother had been anxious that the weather would prevent us from getting above the timberline. When we finally cleared the Ponderosa and ancient Bristlecone Pines, she relaxed. “Look,” she said, pointing into the distance. “That’s Kansas.” Beyond that Missouri, then Illinois. I strained to see to the edge of everything.

On the way back down, we traded seats, and views, with the couple across from us. That meant my birth mother and I rode backwards both ways, the train taking us to someplace that was always ahead. It made me dizzy to turn my head to see where we were going so instead I kept my eyes on where we had been. As the train rumbled through Hell Gate and into the boulder fields, we exchanged small talk with our seat mates, asking simple questions that generally garner simple answers from strangers.

“Are you related?” the man asked us.

We paused too long and the question hung there awkwardly. I glanced at my birth mother.

“Well,” she began, searching my face.

“Daughter-in-law?” the man guessed.

“Take off the ‘in-law,'” my birth mother told him.

“Daughter?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “But it’s complicated. We just met a couple of years ago.”

“She has a wonderful mother,” my birth mother offered.

I wanted to clear the confusion, to explain our hesitation and this game of words. My birth mother could say, “This is my daughter,” but I couldn’t say, “This is my mother.” Yet, I didn’t want to call her “birth mother,” either, to reduce her to this loaded label. I kept referring to her as “she” and “her,” the pronouns erasing her even more.

All the way up, she had been asking, “Do you see? Do you see?” And I kept looking, following the tip of her voice through the open window to the winter emptiness that still managed such beauty. We were a beauty amid words that could not hold us and I wanted these strangers to see, to hear, that, too.

As I struggled to find the right words, my birth mother began to speak. She, this woman who is not my mother but is, this woman who had only recently broken a 38-year silence, began to tell her story to these two strangers on the train. She has wonderful parents. I was there first. There are two of them. They leaned forward into her words, eyes wide in amazement. What was it like? How does it feel? What will you do? They looked at her, at me, trying to keep us both in view at the same time.

She kept talking. We kept talking. You see, her husband is our birth father. You see, he didn’t know until it was too late. You see, they had a son who is our brother. You see, we don’t know what to call this or where we will go, but we are here now. 

Twenty minutes later, the train crawled into the station in Manitou Springs. We had all stopped looking at the mountain. “That,” our seat mate said as he and his wife stood up to gather their belongings, “that was the most fascinating story I have ever heard on any train, plane, or car.” We ducked our heads to gather our own bags, smiling.

Out in the bright sunshine, my birth mother and I blinked, almost giddy.

“You just told your story to two strangers on a train,” I told her.

“I did,” she grinned. “Yes.”

“How does it feel?”

She paused. “Fine.” Her whole face glowed. “Wonderful.”

* * * * *

The next evening, my birth parents dropped me off at the airport so I could catch a late flight home. In the rush of last-minute talk on the ride there, I told them that my sister and I always say good-bye by raising two fingers into the air, the sign for “victory” and for “peace.” We did this when we left for college, when I left for my honeymoon, when she left for war, whenever we just left. I tried to explain that my twin and I transcend touch in some ways, that our connection is so spiritual that we rarely feel the need to hug. We speak with our eyes; we speak with our raised fingers; we speak without words into any physical distance that separates us.

But that is my twin. At the airport curb, my birth mother reached for a hug.

“Thank you for having me,” I said, putting my arms around her.

“Literally? Do you mean that literally?” she asked, her voice against my ear.

I pulled away, laughing at the accidental double meaning of my gratitude.

“Yes,” I said. “Thanks for having me.”

When I looked back one more time before entering the airport, she was standing there holding her hand in the air, two fingers raised.

V for victory.

V for peace.