Don’t Get Your Knickers in a Twist

A Mother-Daughter Relationship In Cliches

“Once, shame on you, twice, shame on me.” is a cliche my mother used to bandy around. She told me she’d gotten it from her father. ‘How’s your father?’ I asked her, forgetting for a moment that he was dead. ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ she retorted, reminding me that ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’

“But I don’t ever ‘beat about the bush,” said I, trying to remember a time when we were ‘all for one and one for all.’ “Pride cometh before a fall’ my girl,” my mother warned me, while also swearing that ‘a stitch in time saves nine.’

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ and if ‘life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” I said. “Money doesn’t grow on trees,’ and I told you ‘in a nick of time’ to ‘save for a rainy day.” She reminded me.

‘The truth will set you free,” I responded. ‘Ain’t that the truth.’ She agreed.

“Like mother, like daughter,’ and ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t, so why ‘put the cart before the horse?” She demanded. “Because I’m stuck in the middle with you,’ ‘neither coming nor going,’ and ‘not knowing my arse from my elbow,” I answered.

‘What have you done for me lately?’ She wanted to know, when I came around, ‘cap in hand.’ “Do onto others as you’d have them do onto you,” I advised, before ‘giving her enough rope to hang herself with.”

“It’s not what you have but what you do with what you have,” she admonished me, gently, before adding, ”When all is said and done, I can send you back where you came from.”

“And there’s naught as queer as folks,” I nodded, ‘pulling myself up by my bootstraps’ and ‘making hay while the sun shines.”

“Did you really have to ‘bare all?’ She asked. “In the final analysis,’ ‘It was the making of me,” I replied.

“”Not to labour the point’ and ‘be that as it may, I’m having the final word.” She smirked at me.

Inspired by Marilyn Flower’s cliche-ridden It’s Not Rocket Science Unless it is

©️marla bishop 2020

Marla Bishop lives in London with her family, her dog Ellie and a fish called Sparkle. She’s the only person she knows who thinks she’s funny. You can follow her here