The Lanyard

Yesterday, I went to see my son perform in his high school play, “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.” He plays Charlie Brown, a character so unlike AJ it’s amazing that he pulled it off. AJ is unceasingly happy. Charlie Brown is chronically depressed. As I watched my son play his character, I saw him experience repeated calamities and catastrophes. He was teased by other characters. He failed at most everything he tried. As his mom, I felt myself getting so emotional at his distress that tears pricked my eyes. It was really his comical character’s distress, but all I could see was my son, and I felt so sad for him, this cartoon character! Sometimes, being a mom is tough stuff!

Then last night, I opened an email from my dear friend Kim. She shared with me this beautiful poem that was read by her niece at the memorial service for her beloved sister-in-law, Marigrace.

If you are a mom or if you have a mom, you will relate:

“The Lanyard”
By Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past —
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift–not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Happy Mother’s Day today and everyday to all you wonderful moms out there!

Susan