The things we do in the name of love.
It was a dreadful Tuesday — the day the math teacher handed back our answer sheets. I waited for mine with the familiar knot in my stomach.
When the paper finally landed on my desk, I scanned the numbers quickly. Something felt off. He had given me five extra points by mistake. The same answer had been counted twice.
I stared at the paper for a long moment. Then I walked up to his desk and held it out, “Sir… I think you gave me five extra marks.”
He looked at the sheet, then at me. And said something that blew my mind. “I’ll give you those extra five marks for your honesty,” he declared.
That was the first time my honesty was rewarded. And maybe the moment I learned that telling the truth could make adults proud.
I grew up believing I should always tell the truth. So when my friend got her first period, her mother asked me to tell the school she was unwell. Just say she’s sick, she said.
That day we had physics class. And our physics teacher had a habit of pausing in the middle of lessons to deliver moral speeches about truth — always in the name of God. “Always be truthful,” he said that morning. “God is watching.”
Right after that little sermon, he looked straight at me. “By the way, why didn’t your friend come to school today?”
My heart started pounding, but I said what her mother told me to say, “She’s not well, Sir.”
He nodded and continued teaching. But to me, that nod felt heavy. Accusing, even. Almost like a question: Are you lying? The thought wouldn’t leave me alone.
After class, I walked up to his desk and confessed: “Sir… actually, I lied. My friend didn’t come because she got her first period.”
He looked confused, as if he never expected that kind of information. He just turned away and asked me to go back to my class.
That evening, I went home and told my sister what had happened. She stared at me like my honesty betrayed my friend. That was the day she told me something I never forgot:
You don’t have to be the one confessing other people’s truths. Just focus on your own.
Another lesson learned. Or in this case — earned.
While I was still figuring out which truths to tell and which to avoid, especially when they involved other people, my lies were never very convincing.
You could always tell from my shifting eyes, the awkward pauses, and the smile that always arrived at the wrong moment and gave everything away.
So I didn’t lie much. Not successfully, anyway.
If something involved me, I usually told the truth — sometimes more than anyone asked for.
When I had to go to the airport at 2 am to see my boyfriend off, I told my dad the truth. I told my mom everything that bothered me — as a teenager and as an adult — without holding back. My siblings knew more about my life than they did about their own. I could leave my journal in the middle of the living room, and no one would touch it. There was nothing in it that they didn’t already know.
Honesty came naturally to me until I became a parent.
Somewhere between that math classroom and motherhood, honesty stopped being simple.
While getting her shot, my three-year-old daughter looked at me with those serious little eyes, “Mommy, will it hurt?”
Without a second thought, I said, “No, it won’t. I love getting shots because it leaves a tingling feeling inside your skin when the needle pushes the medicine.”
She believed me completely. So much so that she started looking forward to shots. Even now, she prefers shots to taking oral medications.
I would tell my kids that Tylenol tasted like a strawberry milkshake and that frozen yogurt was real ice cream. They believed everything I said as they were still getting used to the world through me.
I told myself it wasn’t a lie. It was preparation, or maybe protection.
But when it came to other things — the imaginary kind — I chose honesty. Santa. The tooth fairy. Monsters under the bed.
I told her the truth before she even turned five. With one condition: She could never reveal it to other kids, because fantasies make childhood fun.
She stared at me like I was joking, “What makes you think kids are so stupid, Mom?”
“It’s not about that,” I said. “It’s about having something fun to look forward to so the excitement is alive.”
So I told the truth whenever she asked about things that had no logical explanation. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.
Truth became harder to keep up with as my daughter grew older. By the time she turned seven, she wasn’t relying only on what I told her anymore. She treated my words as just one piece of information — supporting evidence for patterns she was already discovering on her own.
And suddenly, life became more interesting than usual. I had to choose my words and emotions carefully around her. She was paying attention to everything.
Whenever I said, “Oh, I am not angry at all” or “I’m not crying,” she would give me this look, like I was holding back. She began tracking the “before” and “after,” connecting dots before I even saw them.
She would read my face and body language better than anyone else ever had. She noticed things I didn’t even realize I was doing. “Mom, you forgot your usual spot.” “Why is your voice a bit raised today? Are you not happy about something?” or “You’re not laughing like you usually do. Are you okay?”
It was like having a tiny face-reader following me around — even to the restroom — just to make sure I was myself, no matter what life threw at me.
She became my constant companion — my cheerleader who never let me feel alone. No matter how many times I tried to explain that grown-ups handle problems differently from kids, that we eventually figure things out, she wasn’t convinced by words alone. She believed only what she could see.
She expected promises to be delivered— the kind of honesty adults struggle to live up to.
So there were days I put on a smiling face and said, “I’m just fine,” and I exaggerated my dance moves so she could see that I was actually happy. As my lies improved, so did my performance.
Motherhood made me choose my battles. Sometimes, my lies.
Yet there were times I reminded her not to use words too freely — to think before speaking.
One day she told her teacher, “My mom didn’t wake up early today, so my dad packed my lunch.”
I smiled when I heard about it. But later I wondered, how do you teach a child what not to share in a world where mothers are judged so easily?
Recently, my daughter got very stressed about an exam and asked if she could stay home. She said she felt overwhelmed, and I said yes.
This was the same child who had once shown up for an exam unprepared and sick because she didn’t want to give up. So this time, when she asked for a day off, I wanted her to trust what she was feeling.
When her teacher called to check on her absence, I told the truth — that she needed a day off. The teacher wasn’t pleased. She said stress wasn’t a good enough reason to miss an exam, as if she were also my daughter’s doctor.
That’s when I realized something unexpected:
Sometimes, the truth doesn’t work with adults either.
I grew up believing that telling the truth made me proud. Becoming a parent taught me that it can also complicate life.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to be honest all the time. Like when my daughter shows me her portrait of me and asks, “What do you think, Mom?”
And I can see everything that could be better. Yet I smile and say, “It’s beautiful. It looks just like me.”
Sometimes honesty sounds like correction; gentleness sounds like reassurance.
I’ve learned that children don’t always need correction first. Because in the end, I don’t want to measure my life by the truths that left everyone speechless. I want to measure it by the moments that made them feel loved.
So more often than not, I choose gentleness.
And almost always, I let the smile be the closing line.
What’s a small lie you’ve told in the name of love? Please share it in the comments.
© Tamil, 2026.
Image credit: Photo by Ionela Mat on Unsplash
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