The most frustrating example I can recall was my inability to find the words to explain why I wanted to leave my Catholic middle school. I was being bullied by my former friends but she fixated on the wrong element of the conversation: leaving a Catholic institution.

She found it too difficult to wrap her head around my descriptions of social exclusion and mental health. The amount of synonyms I had to throw at her hoping she’d be able to hold on to something tipped me to a boiling point until I tearfully yelled “they’re just not nice to me anymore”. We sat there in silence, while she tried to piece together everything I said and I came to the realisation we could never have a proper heart-to- heart conversation.

It’s times like these that I often forget Ammi faces similar challenges when we’re trying to understand one another. I was so self absorbed in my teenage angst that it only occurred to me in adulthood that she likely confronted many challenges as an adult immigrant that she couldn’t articulate to me as well.

Now it plagues my brain – were her days filled with laboured interactions at the grocery store or in the doctor’s office? Does she perceive herself as boring in the Western world because she can’t put colour and life into her conversations? Does it bother her that she has no choice but to describe raising two young children during a civil war in a reductive way to me?

We’re both struggling to bridge the gulf between our worldviews with words. It’s like we’re on opposite sides of a fault line that’s threatening to disconnect us even farther from each other after the slightest argument. So we stay clear of getting too close in case we encounter possible misunderstandings that often arise because we are oblivious to the other’s intentions and expectations.

I have learnt overtime that I shouldn’t let potential blow ups discourage us from pursuing more challenging conversations. I admit, using every synonym under the sun until something clicks can be irritating. For starters, even explaining my current job was painful. Media you can only hear... radio but not live... listen to stories... Spotify but for talking... That messy collage of keywords was my attempt at trying to describe a podcast network.

I have made peace with the fact that I have spent and will continue to spend a lot of time with Ammi trying to get her to understand me. It’s similar to a newborn trying to communicate why they are upset. But just like she did when I was a baby, she tries to soothe me. Even if her attempts at consoling me often stop at advising me to pray and have faith in God, I have grown to realise it’s enough that she’ll even try to console me when life experiences occur beyond her vocabulary.

Somehow, Ammi is understanding even when she doesn’t understand.

I may never be able to fully communicate the nuances of my life to her but communication is so much more than just what we say. Ammi expresses her love through freshly squeezed orange juice, tupperware filled to the brim with home cooked food, plates of cut fruit and a fridge stocked with Mango Passion kombucha because I said I liked it once.

Food has come to symbolise our common ground and unspoken language. I know all the Sinhalese names for the dishes Ammi cooks. It is one of the few parts of Sinhala that I inherently know. Appa, kottu rotti, pol sambol, pittu, kiribath, gotu kola, idiyappam, bandakka – they all exist somewhere in my psyche and I don’t even know the names of their English substitutes.

Since I’ve shown a keen interest in cooking she has recently started teaching me and my partner how to cook traditional meals. So far her version of cooking lessons involves cryptic instructions with unclear measurements. And she has a tendency to finish every sentence with “add to taste” or “are you looking?”.

Regardless of her strange teaching approach, I appreciate her taking the time to show me how to cook because she is the only blueprint I have for what it’s like to be Sri Lankan. Her homemade curry powder and traditional meals are the reason I feel like I have any sort of claim to my birthplace.

To this day, every time I wind up under the odorous roof of a Sri Lankan grocery store, I call Ammi to ask her questions about which brand of tamarind I should buy or which street food I used to like as a child. She always picks up the phone, answers my trivial questions without judgment and asks me when I will be coming over next.

Ammi has never ended a phone call with the words ‘I love you’ and yet, I have never once felt unloved.

Instead, as a devout Catholic, she says ‘God bless you’, which I have come to realise is her version of those three special words. I don’t believe in a higher power so the phrase ‘God bless you’ holds little meaning to me.

Most of the time, atheists mind their own business, but as Ammi would say I have been a ‘stubborn pandithaya’ about my lack of beliefs. Much to my mother’s dismay, I roll my eyes every time she quotes Bible verses and I refuse to go to church. Up until recently, my stance on religion has been unwavering.

My best friend has similar religious beliefs to me and one morning last week, she came over and pointed out the statue of Jesus on our kitchen wall. It was only his head and his face was gaunt and dripping with blood. It was meant to serve as a reminder of his sacrifice on the crucifix.

“That is hilarious, I wish I had something like that on my wall,” she laughed.

Her house is full of knick knacks and unusual items so this came as no surprise to me. What did shock me was Ammi’s reaction to what she overheard.

“If you want, you can have,” she said, smiling warmly at my friend.

I was suddenly overcome with a need to protect her. This situation was a prime example of how vulnerable my mother can be to people’s motives. “No, we should keep it,” I immediately said.

In that moment, I realised no one has sacrificed more for me than my mother, not even Jesus (although, she’d fight me on that). I hold a kind of reverence for her that many have for religious deities.

Maybe the next time we end a call, I’ll tell her, ‘God bless you’.