Not all women who have children are mothers. You can tell a true mother by the prating1 look in her eye. A mother always knows everything about you. Absolutely everything.
I had such a mother. I could hide nothing from her. When I would walk into the house after pigging out on chocolate cake at the neighbor’s, she would glance at me and say, “How many times do I have to tell you not to eat between meals? No dessert for you tonight, young lady.”
I looked at her, dumbfounded: How could she see across the street and through the walls of my friend’s house, while she was cleaning the bathroom floor?
“How did you know that?” I asked, wiping crumbs from my chin.
“A mother always knows,” she said.“I can read your forehead. Hand me the Bon Ami. I see a fingerprint on the doorknob. ”
When I would race into the house from school, my eyes popping like a choked fish, my mother would simply point to the bathroom door. “How did you know I had to go?” I asked, as I galloped2 to the toilet with my legs twisted like a pretzel.
My mother would shrug. “I read it on your forehead.”