Building any relationship is the same

Some who know me knows that I don't go home much, perhaps only for 2-3 weeks a year. I think that part of this trace its root to my instinctual wish to escape from the brokenness in my family. I've never felt close with my parents. While I try to be filial and nice, my relationship with my parents is dry. When I call either one of them, I find myself having nothing to say, and end up simply asking for their health, telling them that everything is okay and hanging up. Especially my mom, although she trusts me with handling worldly affairs, she still seems to treat me as a little kid inside so she doesn't open up to me. Our conversations stagnate around trivial things about everyday life which I don't care, such as whether to change the car's tire, whether to change the flooring, and whether to buy X from Wal-mart. There's a concrete wall between us.

When I was talking to a friend about this earlier this year, she told me that in building any relationship, I've got to open up. Theoretically, this makes so much sense, but every time I try on the phone, reasons against it bombard my head and the words dematerialize before reaching my lips. Ever since I was about 12, I've been a very different person from who my mom thinks I am, and now the chasm has grown so wide that it seems hopeless. Growing up, I've never shared the things that most affected me, partly because I thought my mom would take it wrongly or freak out, this long habit seems impossible to break. The concrete wall is thick.

Thankfully, during my trip last week to 张家界, this got a lot better. It was the first time that we really hung out for as long as I remember. Simply being with each other in a gorgeous landscape, laughing together about trivial things, improvising together in front of my new video camera--it made the dryness I felt earlier disappear. In the previously parched land rivers began to flow and grass began to grow. Suddenly, the concrete wall dissolved, and I was able to share things in my life which I never thought I would tell my mom, and we laughter about it all. My friend was so utterly right: building a relationship is not so mysterious; the simple, obvious things do work. I'm learning to befriend my mom, and it's not as hard as I thought.