Terri - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/48/justice

My wife is adopted by her biological grandmother. When we refer to my mother in law, or Alicia's mom, we're never refer to her biological mother that way, that's always her biological grandmother. My biological mother in law is always referred to as Terri.

Always.

She's never mom, never mother, never grandma, and never anything besides Terri.

The reason behind this is that ever since I've ever known Alicia, Terri has been in jail. She's a career criminal. Ever since forever she has been in jail, and ever since, forever although she's not a part of Alicia's life, she is.

You see, although we never talk about her, never mention her, and never ever do anything related to her.  The problem comes in a few ways. First, when she was younger she had to visit Terri in prison, which is always great for a child meeting their parent in jail. Second, because Terri is Terri, and crazy, we're not quite sure who biologically Alicia's father is. Third up, from jail, Terri likes to bug Alicia's mom, which is always Terri trying to say that she's changed and that life is differ. . . . just send her some money.

Terri is one of those things in our relationship that we never talk about, but is always hanging there, in the background, ready to sneak out and attack at any time without mentioning. Terri can pop out when you least expect her for getting off on good behavior, giving a call to Alicia's mom for no reason, or whatever else. The tricky part about Terri is that I want to meet her. I have never seen her, I don't know which prison she is in, but I just want to meet the lady and figure out what in the world her problem is. I don't know what I would say to her, I don't know what I would ever do if I saw her, I just want to see her, hear her voice, and maybe say hello to her from a distance just so I can at least say that I've had contact with the tainted human that is Terri.

Finally comes the problem that is the trickiest part about the entire deal - it's assumed and under strict rules, that Addison and Terri are to never know about each other.

Terri is to never have any knowledge of Addison, her biological grand daughter. And Addison is to never, ever, EVER even know that Terri even exists. I get the intentions of it, and I understand the basis. Terri is in no way shape or form Alicia's mom, and so giving her the title of grandma is insulting because she wasn't even a mom, so she has no reason to be the grandma. But, I'm super duper afraid of the fact when Addison starts to get older and starts to try to find out more about her family, and I won't know how to answer. When she finds out about Alicia being adopted, what do I say? Where do I go with it? How can I even talk about Terri to Addison, when I haven't even seen a picture of her before?

I understand the logistics of the reason that we're cutting Terri out of the picture. She's a bad influence, she's made poor choices in her life, and even while pregnant with Alicia was making bad choices with her consumption of drugs and what not. Terri is the reason (or at least part of the reason) that Alicia has commitment issues and thinks that people will abandon her. Just imagine what that has to do to a child knowing that their parent didn't want them and didn't know how to treat them correctly. It sticks with them, and even though Alicia is an adult now and knows better, she's stuck with that knowledge so I'm okay with Terri taking a back seat for the actions that she chose to follow in her life. I just wonder how good that will go later on when Addison starts asking questions.