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.