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PROMPT | CATHARSIS CHRONICLES | LIES
Through the Lens of My Mother’s White Lies
The real damage was evident after her death
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The first lie I ever heard came from my mother. I can’t pinpoint an exact moment; that would be like trying to count the stars in an endless constellation. How do I convey all I witnessed when I didn’t have the cognitive sense or conceptual understanding?
Imagine a child holding a mother’s hand, standing in a field of summer flowers, faces turned towards the cloudless blue sky as the sun shines down on them. The mother turns lovingly to the child and whispers, “Hurry, love, run, it’s going to rain. Can’t you see?”
The child, confused, can’t see, but she believes her mother. There is nothing but love and goodness between them. It must be true. For all the child knows, the sky might be falling, too, so she runs into the woods beyond as fast as she can, still holding her mother’s hand. She doesn’t want to get wet when the sky falls on her.
This interpretation is how I began to understand white lies. I would hear a thousand more before I realised it was my mother’s default mode, a kind of fight or flight, even when the beasts weren’t chasing her. She was always…
