It’s belated, but in honor of Mom’s Day, a painfully applicable poem by Billy Collins:
The Lanyard
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.
![A family living on the outskirts of Anchorage decided to build a sturdy, colorful playground for their 3 and 4 year old sons, with smooth-stone gravel all around it to avoid knee scrapes and other injuries.
They finished building it on Saturday evening, and the following morning, as mom was about to wake up the boys and have them go out to play in their new play center, this is what she saw from the upstairs window.
[via]
Once, in junior high, this girl who was, on the whole, rather disagreeable, told me she thought I looked like a bear cub. I’m pretty sure she was trying to insult me, the cantankerous strumpet, but I walked away grinning ear to ear because I think bear cubs are pretty much the darn-tootin’ cutest things ever!](http://media.tumblr.com/itjDEizuS8xltojqRTYdX8ML_400.jpg)
