Maternal wisdom

My mother has given me little advice over the course of my life, so the few words she has offered have a kind of written-in-stone endurance. The other day I was groping among the snarled spools in my sewing-machine drawer for the right color to hem a skirt, and I knew with absolute clarity what it should be—"Always go a shade darker than the fabric," quoth my mother—but I couldn't find the precise tint. So I gave up and threw the damn skirt away. Probably would have made my ass look too big anyway.