Pineridge Blog

The Lanyard by Billy Collins

The other day… 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 more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid 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 teaspoons of medicine to my lips, set cold facecloths on my forehead 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 archaic truth, 
that you can never repay your mother, 
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands, 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.'