We used to be best friends. Talked about everything, went shopping together, asked for each other’s opinions, cooked together, all the things best friends do. My mom didn’t treat me like a daughter, she asked for my advice and actually, sometimes I felt like I was her mom. She lost her mom very early on in life, so I guess it was comforting for her to have someone to rely on.
And then I moved. Very very very far. To another country, ten plane hours away and eight time zones apart.
And it felt like we were universes apart in terms of how distant our relationship became.
No, we haven’t stopped communicating. No. quite to the contrary, we have talked on the phone every single day, way more often than back when we lived I the same zip code.
I couldn’t get it. Our conversations were boring, cold, impersonal, as though I was talking to another person. We would even have fights – we rarely had fights before. And now we even hung up on each other several times.
I was upset but at the same time I was trying to understand why our relationship changed so dramatically.
I know the move and the distance.
Interestingly, when I went to visit my mom, we slipped in our fuzzy loving and caring roles in no time. The moment I picked up the phone to call her from home – it was as though a bucket of cold water was poured over our hearts.
I sensed that is was not just about the distance, there was something about the phone as a vehicle of our relationship that was not working.
That tragic and painful phenomenon went on for several years.
But the mystery was resolved overtime.
Ok, I kept you waiting for long enough to find out what it was.
Thank you for reading, by the way.
Skype fixed it all!
Yes, Skype, the video calling tool has saved my relationship with my mom.
It also pretty much destroyed my weekend afternoons, because now I spend hours chatting with my parents. But it is totally worth it.
We are back to normal – chatting and laughing, showing each other our new shoes and clothes. Cooking together, eating together. Celebrating each other’s birthdays and much much more.
The thousands of miles between us are gone. We haven’t been physically further away from each other and our relationship has never been stronger.
Thank you, Skype!
Interesting how the visual medium component brought things back for you and your mom--several years ago it was all the rage in business to talk about how video conferencing would revolutionize business (no more need for business trips and thus saving money, etc.). Never mind that video conferencing would add even more meetings to the meetings people already hated going to.
ReplyDeleteStill, something interesting happened with video conferencing, and researchers found that even though the visual brought a certain element of social context cues back to mediated communication that phone conference calls could never match, it could also change the dynamic in some ways. Sometimes people in FtF (face-to-face) meetings who may normally blend in turned out to be very photogenic in video--and the opposite happened as well (which wasn't great when it was the boss who looked bad or uncomfortable on video).
Thank you, Shawn.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, the video component changes the dynamic of a conversation, especially in a professional setting.
I think it pushes people to be more disciplined. Not only in terms of multi-tasking, let's be honest, most of us do all sort of things when we talk on the phone; but also in term of our body language and facial expressions. The social context cues become a little bit of a burden, because they force us to behave in a socially accepted way. Something we don't really have to do when we talk on the phone.