Chapter 23

Terri's turn:

I really DO love my mom. I'm speaking of my natural mom, the person who carried me for nine months, then gave birth to me. I did not and still do not understand why she left Dad for Mister Martin. I know both men and there's no comparison. Tina tells me that there are things that go on in people's hearts and heads that are not easily defined.

Defined. If you define 'step-mom', it means the woman who marries your dad. That's Tina. Dictionary definitions are so inadequate.

While I was living with Mom and Mister Martin in California, I knew other kids around my age. A couple of them had step-parents. I'd talk with them, visit, play at their homes and they played at mine, at least when Mom could sort of manage to keep herself on track.

I find that my step-mom, the Evil Christina, is NOT the standard step-mom. Sadly, I feel closer to Tina than my real Mom. Mom's got 'issues'. That's the kind term for being past bi-polar and into clinical schizophrenia. Maybe that had something to do with her leaving Dad.

Back to Tina. I love Tina. I love Dad. The neighborhood, though – wow! They call it a community. I call it 'Community' with a capital 'C'. It's marvelous, in the literal sense. I do indeed marvel. I get to grow and learn and I have kids my age, Rachel and Vicki, and we have an open university. Not elementary school. Not high school. University. We want to learn, we GET to learn.

But that brings us to the present discussion. Part of the agreement Dad made with Mom when she agreed for me to come live with him and Tina was that every summer I would go stay in California with her and Mister Martin. Sounds sane, doesn't it?

There are, as I have read, unusual circumstances. First one is that Mom's medical condition is an unknown. The doctors are trying to get some sort of drug mix that will allow her to function in everyday society.

The second one is me. I try explaining what is going on with my education. I know that Dad and Tina have tried to explain as well.

I don't think it was understood.

I had mixed feelings when Dad and Tina let me go to my flight for the trip to California. In retrospect, I should have gotten somebody to go with me, because I would have been more comfortable, but the trip went okay, if 'okay' includes having people explain things to me like I'm ten. Okay, I AM ten, but really?

Mom and Mister Martin met me at the airport at the other end of the trip. Mom seemed a little too calm. I'm thinking drugs. Probably prescription, but drugs.

We did the normal huggy-kissy 'I miss you' and 'I love you' and I really was happy to see Mom, and if you must know, Mister Martin, as well. Tina explained to me some of the things he must be going through with Mom.

We went home. Same apartment. My room ... The room of a standard kid, which I am NOT. Fortunately, I am connected. Dad and Tina gave it all to me – iPhone, iPad, my very own MacBook Air. If nothing else, I can hotspot to my iPhone, because cable TV isn't going to cut it.

I miss everybody – my community. I miss Rachel and Vicki.

Mom and Mister Martin take me out to dinner. They ask what I want. Another thing I miss ... food. Cindy's crazy cookies. Whatever we can get from the back door of the Desai restaurant.

They tried to keep me entertained. I went to a movie with them, trying to meet expectations of being a normal ten year old girl.

I am not a normal ten year old girl. I visited with the one girl who was my age who still lived here in the apartment complex. It was like I was an ALIEN, and not one of the Hispanic ones, you know, but one from another planet.

Tried that one day. I disconnected myself as nicely as I could, went back to Mom's and went in my room and did a quick set of texts. Had to catch up on Vicki and Rachel. Everybody else, too.

Mom stuck her head in the door of my room. "What's wrong, Terri?"

"Carissa's, I dunno, Mom, she's just doing kid stuff. I tried. I can't explain..."

"She's your age, honey."

"Mom, I'm not my age. I'm a high school grad."

"That's what your dad said," she sighed. "For real?"

"Yes ma'am. I'm actually taking college courses. I showed you my Google business card." A light bulb went off in my head. "Uh, Mom? Can I call 'em?"

"Who?"

"My team at Google? Maybe visit?"

"You're serious."

"Mom, you saw Bot-bot. The videos."

"I thought your dad did that."

"No, Mom. I did. Lots of help. My ideas. My concepts. That's why – Google."

"How would you do such a thing?"

"I'd email 'em. Just see who's at Mountain View and if I could visit."

"You'd just visit."

"Yes, Mom. I do teleconferences from time to time. I get phone calls. Email."

"You're ten."

"And sort of not, Mom. It's sort of complicated."

"How did my little girl get to be – YOU?"

"You. Dad. Nuclear reactor. Neutrino shower. And here I am."

"You love your stupid mom?"

"You're not stupid, Mom. And yes, I love you. You're my Mom."

"I love you too, honey," she said.

Mister Martin doesn't know what to think of me either.

Bad enough that I was uncomfortable and missing my friends, but then Mom kind of slipped off the tracks. There was a lot of hollering involved, then the police and an ambulance and there I was with Mister Martin.

"You said you thought she was leveling off, though," I told him.

"I thought she was, too, baby," he said. "I'm so sorry. The medicine makes her feel strange, and sometimes she stops taking it, and she goes along for a while, then this happens."

I hugged him. "I love my mom, but that's just scary."

"That's why she consented to you going to live with your dad, Terri."

"So how long are they gonna keep 'er?"

"I dunno. Maybe we'll find out tomorrow."

"Can we visit her?"

He shook his head. "Not for a few days until they get the swings under control."

"The guys at Google said they'd come get me for a day."

"I can't let you go, baby," he said. "Just can't."

"They'll come get me. You can meet 'em. One of 'em's a girl. Kim Hong Li. And there's Chen and Ron."

"If I get to meet 'em."

"Okay. I'll set it up for day after tomorrow."

"Can you stay with Mizz Ainsley? Carissa's mom? I can go to work then..."

"I can do that," I said. I didn't tell him that I felt my IQ starting to drop already.

Two days later he stayed with me until he met Kim Hong Li. Her family name is 'Kim'. She's Korean, well, her parents are. She LOOKS Korean. Sounds American. She's somewhat of a prodigy herself. She and I can relate. She says, "Go ahead. Everybody calls me 'Kim'. Don't do that in Korea. Half the country will think you're talking to them."

A day at Google was fun. We didn't get any real work done, but they gave me a grand tour and showed me videos of some of the latest stuff.

"Very practical," I said. "We went the other way with Bot-bot because we wanted people to have the fun of relating to a robot."

"That is subject of much discussion here," Chen said. "What are your thoughts?"

"Make it like Bot-bot, so everybody says 'Hey! I'm talkin' to this robot!' and they color their actions in a direction we set by the way we set up and program the robot. Or we try and make it sound and act human, like Siri..."

"We don't like to talk about Apple," Kim laughed.

"Oh, you know what I mean. People talk to Siri almost like she's human. Or," I said, "you can make the robotic component invisible. Like the control blocks in a car, for example. Embedded systems. Little bits of it interact with people and nobody thinks about or notices that they're working with some amount of robotic intelligence."

Two days later, we got to visit Mom. If I thought she looked and acted kind of spaced out before, she was REALLY under this time. I hugged her. I know she recognized me and she hugged me and we tried talking a bit, but she nodded off.

The doctor told us that they were trying another mix of drugs and that it might be a week or more before they'd get her lucid.

After the hospital, I told Mister Martin, "I guess I need to go back to Alabama."

"I'm sorry, Honey," he said. "This isn't what we planned."

That night Tina and Dad and I had a Skype session. Afterward, I had a good cry over Mom. Tina says Mom never intended to end up like this. I know she didn't. Still hurts though. Tina says that's love, to hurt like I hurt, and it's also compassion. Just because I know what the feelings are doesn't make them easy for me.

Mister Martin put me on a plane for home. Yes, sadly, I guess, 'home' is over there in Alabama.

On the long leg of the flight I sat next to a nice man who was probably really upset that he was going to spend hours next to a 'kid'. After we lifted off, I retrieved my iPad and started playing with some programming stuff. He looked over at my iPad.

"Is that a game?"

"Not really. It's fun. I'm blocking out some new functions for my robot. My team at Google gave me some ideas."

"Your robot? Team at Google? How old ARE you?"

"My name is Terri Addison and I will be eleven," I said. I dipped my hand into the pocket of my backpack and pulled out two business cards.

"Wait ... This says 'Engineering Concept Consultant'. And this? Cute."

"That's for my friends and family. I got nicknamed 'pTerridactyl' and it stuck. If something sticks, you go with it. I'm sorry. I didn't get your name, sir."

"Uh ... sorry. Randy Greeves. I'm a production manager for Intellco."

"Really?" I said. "Some of our embeds are Intellco. We're trying to optimize power consumption, though. Your stuff is kind of greedy."

"You know about our embeds?"

"Yessir. Part of what got me mixed up with Google is that I read a book about dinosaurs and saw that they – the Apatosaurus – had a ganglion, kind of like a second brain, to control its rear end. That's what we do with our robot – pseudo-ganglial control networking."

The conversation made the trip fly. Okay, that's a little joke, huh? When I was escorted off the plane, I had business cards and promises to get some engineering samples of some of Intellco's product line.

Connecting flight. Wasn't nearly as interesting. Lady sat next to me. I was 'cute', like her granddaughter. I saw pictures. This time I read a book on my iPad.

I was glad to meet Dad and Tina.

"It's almost like Mom really wasn't there," I told them.

"I'm sorry," Tina said. "I wanted you to have a good time."

"I know. It's ... Even when she was her best, she sort of couldn't believe that I'm not just another ten year old," I said. I told them about my time with Carissa and my time with Kim and Chen at Google and Mister Greeves.

"They're going to send you R&D kits?"

"Yes," I replied. "Sort of like unexpected Christmas presents. Might want to talk to us about using Bot-bot in some of their ads, too."

"Bot-bot's gonna be a star. Cute!" Dad said.

"It'll be fun," I told them. "I mean, really ... Maybe I can get them to use me 'n' Rachel 'n' Vicki in them."

I looked closely at my Tina-mom. I can just maybe see a little bit of a baby bump. That's another adventure I am anticipating, although seeing Tina throwing up in the morning hasn't made me happy. I'm thinking, though, with Tina and Susan having babies and then three months later, Cindy's mom is having a baby, we're gonna have a lot of babies around. I think it's going to be very interesting.