This Mother's Day will come and, after my kids give Loren theirhome-made cards, and after I have some coffee and a half dozen morningcigarettes, I will hike up Bernal Mountain to visit my adoptive mom.

Bernal Mountain isn't much of a mountain, just an undevelopedpromontory above my neighborhood. There are a couple of rock outcroppings where I will sit.

From these rocks I spread my mother's ashes three years ago.

I don't have much to say to her. The words have all been spewed out ofme during visits to the beach in the dead of night. I'd bring lettersasking "Why?" and longer entreaties, all of which I offered up to hermemory in a blazing Bic sacrifice, hoping the smoke might catch herattention. When that didn't seem to work, I'd yell at the surf. And gohome. And look at the box containing her ashes.

She left no specific instructions, so I put her on a shelfbeneath the shrine I used to meditate. Instead of insight meditation Idid this: Breathe in; my mother sitting at her dressing table, tellingme the stories of her family, chatting, turning, and wiping a smudgefrom my face with a Kleenex dampened by her spit. Breathe out; why didyou lie to me? How could you lie to me? Repeat.

Discovering I had been adopted a couple of weeks after my mother Carmen's deathput a big crimp in my grieving cha-cha. Every mournful memory waswoven into a curse. I eventually succeeded in not thinking about itfor long stretches of time but that didn't make it any better when Idid think about it all. Years passed, and I let this reproachful situation eat at meslowly.

Then something clicked. I don't know what, maybe nothing more than thesame urge that gets us out of an uncomfortable chair we've beensitting in too long. I chose her birthday, and, after dinner, I took herto the basement to prepare her. She was in an embossed metal boxwelded shut for an apparent eternity, and I had to use an old-fashioned can opener to cut it open. It was a struggle. I worried about letting fly her ashes to the basement floor, commingling with redwood sawdust and bits of solder droppings. She was resting placidly in an ultra heavy duty plastic bag, tied at the top with a twistie.

I strode up the hill. I was undisturbed as I stood on the rock outcropping watching the City streets radiating out from the foot of Bernal Mountain. I searched thenight sky for the owl that lives up there, but she was out, hunting. Italked to Carmen, "Look I'm still fucking mad as hell, but I can't keepthis up. Rest here, I like this place, I come here a lot. I hopeyou're happy." (This last said in earnest.)

I undid the twistie and threw the baggy up, holding the bottom corners.Instead of the even, gentle dispersal I had imagined, my mother'sashes came out in three of four heavy lumps and formed some odd butdistinct shapes on the ground a few feet away. I crawled down andspread her around a bit.

Then I left. It rained lightly two days later and washed the hill.

Ron Morgan discovered that he was adopted at the age of 36. He now serves on the Executive Committee of Bastard Nation, and is list manager of the Late Discovery Adoptee Mailing List.