<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">The Lanyard </div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">The other day I was ricocheting slowly<br class="">
off the blue walls of this room,<br class="">
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,<br class="">
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,<br class="">
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary<br class="">
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">No cookie nibbled by a French novelist<br class="">
could send one into the past more suddenly—<br class="">
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp<br class="">
by a deep Adirondack lake<br class="">
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips<br class="">
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">I had never seen anyone use a lanyard<br class="">
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,<br class="">
but that did not keep me from crossing<br class="">
strand over strand again and again<br class="">
until I had made a boxy<br class="">
red and white lanyard for my mother.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">She gave me life and milk from her breasts,<br class="">
and I gave her a lanyard.<br class="">
She nursed me in many a sick room,<br class="">
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,<br class="">
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,<br class="">
and then led me out into the airy light</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">and taught me to walk and swim,<br class="">
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.<br class="">
Here are thousands of meals, she said,<br class="">
and here is clothing and a good education.<br class="">
And here is your lanyard, I replied,<br class="">
which I made with a little help from a counselor.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,<br class="">
strong legs, bones and teeth,<br class="">
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,<br class="">
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.<br class="">
And here, I wish to say to her now,<br class="">
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class="">that you can never repay your mother,<br class="">
but the rueful admission that when she took<br class="">
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,<br class="">
I was as sure as a boy could be<br class="">
that this useless, worthless thing I wove<br class="">
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; min-height: 19px;" class=""><br class=""></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; line-height: normal;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Billy Collins</p></body></html>