The morning is lovely. A breeze stirs the wind chimes and blows the oak branches. I sat on the deck with my coffee, my morning ritual, and read two of my Sunday papers. I stopped every now and then, as I always do, to watch the birds. A woodpecker enjoyed the suet I put out on Friday and a raucous blue jay flew from branch to branch. A few nuthatches joined the chickadees at the different feeders and a titmouse was back. The crow hasn’t been by in a couple of days. Tonight is dinner and a movie on the deck.

I grew up with certain truisms. My tongue would turn black when I lied and only mothers could see it. Humiliation would haunt my mother for all the days of her life if I didn’t wear clean underwear and happened to be in an accident. My eyesight, especially in the nighttime, would be greatly improved if I ate my carrots. Santa Claus always knows when I’m bad. My face would be permanently distorted if I made faces. Bubble gum, if swallowed, forms a ball in your stomach that takes years to dissolve. Potatoes grow in dirty ears.

I believed these, and the believing never hurt me, neither did finding out they weren’t true. I remember looking in the mirror to see if my tongue had turned black, not realizing I had given myself away. I envisioned tiny potatoes so I allowed my mother to dig around to clean my ears. I still don’t swallow gum of any sort. Clean underwear is a must, accident or no accident, but that came with growing older. I did wish I hadn’t been forced to eat all those carrots, and I was disappointed Santa wasn’t real, but there were no permanent scars.

When I was older, I never thought of those truisms as lies. I saw them as my mother’s way of getting us to be cleaner, healthier and better behaved. I don’t have kids, but, if I did, I wouldn’t above using a few of those truisms myself. Why mess with success?