<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">The Lanyard </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; "><br></div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">The other day I was ricocheting slowly<br>
off the blue walls of this room,<br>
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,<br>
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,<br>
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary<br>
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">No cookie nibbled by a French novelist<br>
could send one into the past more suddenly—<br>
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp<br>
by a deep Adirondack lake<br>
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips<br>
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">I had never seen anyone use a lanyard<br>
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,<br>
but that did not keep me from crossing<br>
strand over strand again and again<br>
until I had made a boxy<br>
red and white lanyard for my mother.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">She gave me life and milk from her breasts,<br>
and I gave her a lanyard.<br>
She nursed me in many a sick room,<br>
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,<br>
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,<br>
and then led me out into the airy light</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">and taught me to walk and swim,<br>
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.<br>
Here are thousands of meals, she said,<br>
and here is clothing and a good education.<br>
And here is your lanyard, I replied,<br>
which I made with a little help from a counselor.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,<br>
strong legs, bones and teeth,<br>
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,<br>
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.<br>
And here, I wish to say to her now,<br>
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Helvetica; ">that you can never repay your mother,<br>
but the rueful admission that when she took<br>
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,<br>
I was as sure as a boy could be<br>
that this useless, worthless thing I wove<br>
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; min-height: 19px; "><br></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Billy Collins</p><div><br></div></body></html>