A few weeks ago, a childhood dream was realized. Shoe shoeing the deep snow drifts that blocked the gravel road in, I got my first view of Camp Hochelaga in the winter. With Nancy Patrick, my camp buddy, and her faithful doodle dog, Winkie, we even trekked out the the "Point". Well, almost. The ice was a bit too thin as we approached it. Still, we were at Hochelaga in the winter.
As we passed the new crafts building, Nancy and I could not help but bring up the topic of lanyards. I know I started many of them over my camp summers. I am cerain I never finished one. Never got to put the whistle on the hook. Although I am pretty sure I took a few whistles home with me in my camp stash. This week, when I found this Billy Collin's poem--The Lanyard--I wished had finished one.
The Lanyard - Billy Collins
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.
