My son, Wang Jiarui, entered ninth grade and immediately transformed into a creature I barely recognized- half teenager, half disappearing shadow.

He rushed through dinners.
Stayed in his room.
Answered questions with one‑syllable grunts.

When I knocked on his door, he would say, “Mom, I’m busy,” even when he clearly wasn’t.

I knew this stage would come, but knowing didn’t make it easier.

One rainy afternoon, while organizing the hallway closet, I found a box filled with picture books we used to read together when he was little. I sat on the floor flipping through them, remembering how he used to point at every page, asking endless questions:

“Why is the moon following us?”
“Do fish sleep?”
“Where does music come from?”

That night I placed one of the books, The Red Bicycle, on the kitchen table.

My son walked past, glanced at it, and smirked.

“You’re not trying to make me read kids’ books again… right?”

“No,” I said lightly. “But it made me wonder what you read now.”

He paused, shrugged, and said he liked sci‑fi but only some authors. He spoke more in that minute than he had all week.

An idea, small, slightly ridiculous, came to me.

“What if we… start a book club? Just us?”

He raised an eyebrow.
“A book club? Like… every week?”

“Every Tuesday evening. You pick the first book.”

To my surprise, he agreed.

Our first meeting was awkward.

He chose a 400‑page sci‑fi novel full of space battles I couldn’t pronounce. But he explained the plot with so much excitement, hands waving, eyes bright, that I forgot to care about the genre.

By the third week, our book club had become a ritual:

Tea,
two blankets,
one shared book,
and a 45‑minute conversation that stitched us back together.

We talked about characters, but also about life:
fear of failure,
the loneliness of starting high school,
the pressures he felt but never said aloud.

One night he said quietly:

“Mom… I like Tuesdays. I feel like you’re really listening.”

I swallowed hard.
Because I was.
And he knew it.

Six months later, he recommended a novel written by an Asian American author. A story about growing up between cultures.

“I thought of you,” he said. “You’d relate.”

He was right but what touched me wasn’t the book.

It was the fact that he had begun to see me not just as “Mom,” but as a person with my own history and inner world.

Our Tuesday book club still continues. Sometimes we miss a week; sometimes our discussions turn into spontaneous debates; sometimes we end up laughing so hard we forget what chapter we were on.

But every time we sit together on the couch, I feel something soft blooming between us, a bridge built not from big gestures, but from small, consistent moments of attention.

I started the book club hoping to bring him back to me.

Instead, it brought both of us back to who we were before life grew busy:

Two curious minds trying to understand the world together.