Even

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.

———–

Friday, when I picked Alison up from school, she proudly handed me a Mother’s Day card she’d made in class, along with a plastic cup filled with dirt.  Protruding from the dirt was an inch-tall green stalk, a small plant she’d grown herself from a seed.

It doesn’t matter that her sister yanked the tiny plant from the dirt less than 24 hours later.

It doesn’t matter that Alison still sassed me and stayed up later than I intended.

Because while I know her efforts don’t make us even, I’m going to pretend, just for a little while,

that we are.

Happy Mother’s Day!