‘Mother knows best‘.
You know the old saying. If you have a mother that’s in anyway like mine, you’ll have heard this particular phrase a solid 783 times by your 20th year of existence. And despite the repeated nature of the saying, there is a degree of truth in it. Mother’s do know best.
But this begs the question … how? How do they always know the right thing to do? Is it upon becoming a mother, as if pushing a baby out of one’s vagina constitutes the secret to life? Does one gain ultimate knowledge and power in exchange for a little, more energetic version of themselves? Or is it simply that mothers, in all their wisdom, are simply better at winging it, than we are?
My own mother, is, to put it quite simply, an icon. She’s one of the world’s best, and I don’t deserve her. And she too, knows best. I can’t count the amount of times she has told me to take a coat / hat / scarf / pair of gloves because it’s going to rain and ‘you’ll get saturated.’
But do I learn? Of course not. I still saunter out in my chosen outfit of the day and don’t bother with a coat, because it’s not part of my ensemble. And, a few hours later, in I come, dripping from head to toe, and grumbling at the fact that I could have saved myself a lot of bother, and sniffling, had I just listened to her.
And it’s not just trivial matters, like remembering to bring coats and throwing out old pairs of underwear because they have literal holes in them, but more important things as well. They seem to know that while your world may be tumbling down before your very eyes because you said something embarrassing at school, or you didn’t get invited somewhere (and this evidently means EVERYONE hates you), or you projectile vomited on the side of the road AND all over your newly acquired friend (not that this ever happened to me), it will get better, and it’s not the end of life as you know it. My own mother repeats a certain phrase to me constantly, and while I roll my eyes and not pay her any heed I, too, truly believe it. She believes that ‘ it all works out’ in the end, and that you will not leave this life until everything has fallen into place, and I know that, once again, she’s right.
So it’s clear to see that mother’s do know best. And it mightn’t necessarily be that having a baby brings eternal wisdom. Maybe it’s because they’ve been through it too. They know what it’s like to be young and make questionable decisions and think that you are eternal and all knowing. And they try to impart wisdom, and always have our best interests at heart. Whether we take this advice is another matter altogether, but you can’t deny that they try, and it’s undeniable that for now, and forever more, mother’s do know best.