Things My Mother Taught Me
The most important thing I remember from when I was very little was not to lie. My mother told me that she always knew when I was lying and she would look deeply and seriously into my eyes, and demand to be told the truth. Of course, I believed her, such was her conviction when she told me that she always, always knew when I was lying. At first, I would tremble and feel quite terrified that I might have been naughty. Being naughty was quite a crime. But eventually I reasoned (although dogged by uncertainty) that if she had to prolong our inquisition, that maybe she didn’t know after all. In any case, by then I’d decided to take the path of least resistance and determined to always tell the truth. It tugs at me sometimes even now, this need to unburden the whole truth, when clearly the whole truth is seldom required in the adult world. The other thing that strikes me now as slightly odd, especially as I look pretty Oriental, is her insistence when we were small that ...
