The Lanyard
By Billy Collins

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.

We were on New England Cable News yesterday, promoting the book. At the very end of the interview, Karen Swenson — a drop dead, gorgeous anchor — asked us,  “What’s the best Mother’s Day gift you’ve ever gotten?”

We blanked. (I may have been a little dazzled by Karen’s pearly whites.)

I laughed, widened my eyes, frantically wracked my brain and stalled for time.

I thought to myself, hmmm, I don’t get gifts from my husband (his explanation is that I’m not his mother) … so… do you mean the drawings I get from my kids? And anyway, when IS the last time I’ve been given something special for Mother’s Day?

Then I got home and felt like a total idiot. My kids make me breakfast in bed every Mother’s Day and it’s a treat that I love. It reminds me of the good old days when I used to sleep until 10am.

I sure wish my brain had snapped to attention and I hadn’t been so darn side-tracked by worrying about whether or not my arms looked fat.

We’re having our first feature in the U.K. press and I’m psyched.

Why?

Because I am a faux-Londoner and I want to prove we can be relevant ALL OVER THE WORLD.

I was born in Germany but grew up first in NYC and then in London. I spent 14 years there. Judging by my accent, you might think 14 minutes, not 14 years but I promise, I’m not exaggerating. Every time I go back I wax nostalgic. I remember the alleyways where I got “pissed” with my Adam and the Antz look-alike friends and the High Streets where I shop-lifted lip gloss and black nail polish. (You may be relieved to hear that while I had a bad attitude for a while, I did eventually come around!)

Of course, my kids will do none of this bad stuff, will they, because they will be under lock and key. Here, in the safe American suburbs… right? Please?

Anyway, I’m happy we’ll be heard across the pond. It’s for YOU that I expunged as many “moms” as I could from our text, replacing them with “mother” instead! It’s for my friends from University, and the it- girls from school in London, and the not-it girls too, and all those mums who don’t know me… but share the same joys and challenges.

This morning I open my e-mail and I have 1722 mails. 1721 of them are old ones being re-sent to me by Outlook which has, apparently, gone berzerk.

The bathroom above my kitchen is leaking.

My daughter had two teeth pulled and doesn’t want to go to school.

I have to drop off an assessment at a Special Ed program across town and I’m just about to go into a long meeting.

I have an appointment at the doctors to talk about ADHD with my daughter at 5:30 and I’m supposed to do carpool for my other daughter’s lacrosse practice at 6:00.

We’re going to be on TV again next week and I have roots. (I even feel guilty about writing that one down, it seems so vain in light of everything else). Speaking of hair, did I mention one child of mine had lice last week and I became intimately acquainted with the art of de-lousing? Now that was a learning experience.

I don’t know… I could actually go on some more if I didn’t feel like you are all already yawning and saying to yourselves, so what’s new?

On the way to school this morning, Greta (12) gives me a worried sideways glance as I veer into the bushes while making a turn because I’ve noticed that my iPhone is suddenly busy trying to download 1722  e-mails.

She says, “Mami?”

“Oops. Yes, honey?” I answer, looking up and swerving out of the way of a tree behind those bushes.

“Maybe YOU need a time out.” She’s not being cute. She’s being serious. She’s worried about my sanity.

I got tears in my eyes.

I ran a panel this weekend at the Grub Street writer’s conference in Boston called, Moms Who Write. It was fun looking out over the audience and seeing all these women — most with little kids at home, and two who were pregnant — and watching their rapt faces. They soaked up all the information, eager to hear how to balance a life too short on time and too full of passions.

I felt pretty darn old among that group of bright-eyed women. Old in the sense of experienced. I’ve been about as low as low can get in terms of parenting. I have scraped poop off the walls. I have deloused my daughter (this just last week, by the way, in between the five interviews and another TV shoot!). I have cried in frustration more times that I would care to admit. I have raced across the desert with a child with 103 degree fever certain that he would die in my arms (I had no idea that fever this high is not a biggie in infants…!). At this point, what haven’t I experienced with my three kids?

It felt great to give hope to these women. To say: yes, you can do it if you want to! You can carve out a life for yourself and still be a great mom. You will sometimes want to pull your hair out, but who doesn’t? Life is by no means perfect, but it’s our responsibility to make it as good as it can be, not only for our families, but for US too.

When life throws something unexpected in a mother’s path, it’s amazing how they react.

I was really thrown for a loop this week when an unexpected crisis hit home.

1. At first, I was so stunned I didn’t even know how I would get through it… I felt it was my burden to bear and it seemed waaaaay too heavy for me to handle.
2. Then I was sad. I cried. I was mourning for the dream I had for my children that would not come true. I worried about the future.
3. I called my husband (who was away on business) and was thankful that I was not alone.
4. Then, I got angry. Why was this happening to her? To us? To me?
5. The truth is, I also felt guilty. Why? Because I was mad about how much time this would take away from my life– time when I could be doing something I liked instead of putting out fires.
6. Soon I got into pitbull mode: I started gathering information. I fired off letters. I went online. I called my friends.
7. Hmmm … I started to feel better. There were options. They weren’t all bad.
8. I talked to friends some more.
9. Finally, just a few days after feeling devastated, I started to actually feel hopeful. I realized, once again, that life as a mother is unpredictable and that we are much, much stronger than we think.

So my point is really that mothers deal with difficulties and disappointments all the time. They want what’s best for their kids. It’s normal for us to feel confused, overwhelmed, even a bit angry about how much life saps our energy.

And then, we get it together–we rally! We work toward finding solutions and we take a step forward.

Little by little, we try to fix what is broken. And if we can’t fix it, we learn to live with it the best we can.

Yesterday was a very difficult day. I got some bad news about one of my children, and I sat in the office of her school and cried like a ten year old.

I couldn’t help thinking about the irony of publishing this book for moms — about how important it is for us to take our own needs seriously — and then be faced with a crisis that will require years and years of research and advocacy for my littlest. We all face hurdles, some big and some small, in this journey through parenthood. So what do the bigger hurdles teach us?

When our children struggle, they need our attention and our energy more than ever. Where do we find the time and will to put in all this “extra” work when our days are already absolutley crammed full?

How do we do it? It’s not magic: we just do it. We make it happen. We fit it in. Something else gives, but we make it work. And of course, this is where it REALLY helps if — as individuals, as women not moms – we feel strong. I know that the incredible happiness I get from my work and my art, and the small time-outs I take for myself as often as I can, will help me face this challenge with positivity and energy.

Today I went back to yoga for the first time in a year. This after making a New Year’s resolution to go at least once a week. Such is the life of a mom who works.

The funny thing is, I usually feel guilty about not going to yoga. But after I made that resolution, I actually felt good: I was feeling satisfaction just from having the intention to go. I would think about yoga, how great and calm it makes me feel, and a sense of peace would descend on me.

So today I turned up and the teacher, Tal , grinned and said, “Katrin! Good to see you again!”

I felt as though I’d come home after a long absence. Then, at the end of the session, he said, “I hope you have all found some space here today. Because it is space that gives us serenity, clarity and insight.”

I thought, wow. I had entered that room, rushed, crowded by thoughts, people, e-mails, to-do’s, and I left with the gift of space around me.

(Now I wish I could find a way to get to yoga more than once a year…)

For me, here’s the million dollar question: Can we expect our husbands/ partners to understand where we’re coming from–as mothers who want to be everything to everyone–when their own issues are so deep and legitimate?

There’s this divide because the discussion is always framed in the essential question, WHO IS HARDER OFF? Do I have a harder job or do you?

We heard a lot about this in our focus groups! And my husband and I are experts on this very conversation: we’ve had it about four million times in the 18 years we’ve been married.

What skeptical men don’t realize is that, most of the time, mothers aren’t actually saying that we have it hard and fathers have it easy. Most of the 500+ mothers we talked to were amazingly grateful to their husbands for all the work they do in the house and out.

BUT

What do we do to make others understand how we’re feeling? We talk in extremes. At home, we’re desperate to be heard and understood! And when we feel ignored or under-appreciated, resentment builds.

That’s when we stop being real partners with our mates, and start being adversaries.

Our book takes a different tack. We say, okay, here’s a problem modern mothers struggle with… now WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

Sometimes when I talk with men about Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too, they get this glazed look in their eyes that tells me they’re trying very, very hard to bite their tongues, but what they’d really like to do is tell me where to stuff my theories.

Every now and then one of them will venture to say, “Oh, really? You guys need time outs, huh?”

This is an accusation. The tone is incredulous. The words hold all sorts of added, hidden meanings, such as are you kidding me?

Of course, I totally understand where they’re coming from.  They’re tired of hearing their wives complain about having to do so much of the housework, having no time to themselves, being under appreciated, being bored, having headaches, working too hard, having their every dream compromised… bla, bla, bla, bla. This complaining falls on deaf ears, because they just don’t get it. I’m not really sure they’ll ever get it.

I’m not even sure we have a right to expect them to get it. Or do we?

More on this tomorrow…