July 13, 2023 –
Someone said mothers have eyes on the back of their heads. This expression is typically used to convey a mother’s intuitive knowledge. It is an idiom that says someone has seen or noticed something wrong.
My mother had eyes on the back of her head.
One day, my brother and I were throwing a football in our front yard. As young kids will do, we got rowdy and careless and accidentally threw the ball into Mother’s azalea bush, breaking a small twig off near the bottom of the plant. Instantly, we knew we were in trouble. We quickly devised a plan to mix mud and attempt to glue the twig back onto the bush where it was initially.
Eureka, it worked, and we returned to throwing the football.
Later, when Mother came out to check what we were doing, she immediately recognized something was wrong with her brush. The broken twig was still on the bush where it originally was. Yet she sensed something was out of place and said, “Who broke the limb off my bush?”
Only two boys were standing in the yard, and one had a football in his hand. Both knew they were in trouble. Mother knew.
How did you know we broke the twig on your azalea bush? She said because I have eyes on the back of my head! My brother and I looked; we did not see the eyes she spoke of. But we acknowledged she could see the broken twig we had tried to reattach. We also recognize that we faced punishment, not for breaking the bush, but for attempting to cover it up.