<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr">The Lanyard <div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none"></span><br></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none">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.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"><span style="font-kerning: none"><br>
</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-kerning: none"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Billy Collins</span></p></div></body></html>