the lanyard -- another billy collins poem

About two months ago, I started working on something special to say about my mother at her 80th birthday party.

I tried several toasts, but they were either the epitome of rank sentimentality (think of Hallmark on steroids) or starkly clinical (not unlike those introductions that begin: "a woman, who needs no introduction" -- and then turn into eternal ramblings).

I then tried some poems, but each was worse than the one that went before. I ended up without enough wadded paper to fill a full complement of gift bags at a Kennedy baby shower.

And then it hit me. No one can combine good writing with universal truth better than my favorite poet: Billy Collins. I read the following poem to my Sunday school class for mother's day. And I pressed it into service Friday night at my mother's birthday. Do I need to add that nothing I wrote would have been appreciated as much as --

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when 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 into the past more suddenly—

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to braid long 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 sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid 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 worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

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.

~ Billy Collins