My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

The Lanyard by 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.

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My own mum, I realised as I read this poem, still keeps some of the things I made for her as a child -  a crooked pot that won’t hold water, a skewed embroidery – and my dad showed me a file he had of drawings I’d sent to him when I was a boy on the night before I got married, pictures of tanks and soldiers, dinosaurs and him as Superman. Of course, when I was six or eight or ten years old, I soon forgot about these little gifts, just as my girls’ now do. Their drawings are their most precious possessions one moment and discarded on the floor the next.

But that is, I suppose, part of their value for a parent; that they were once so precious to someone who is so precious to you. And they chose to give it to you.

Although the child has moved on, you have, in that tattered piece of paper with its drawing that you thought was a camel but is actually an octopus, something magical – an anchor to a time you don’t ever want to have passed. Children grow up so fast but in these little gifts and creations we give ourselves a window to moments we are often too busy appreciate at the time.

And, of course,  what parent doesn’t crave their child’s affections. To grow up is to undergo a gradual separation from your parents as you explore and immerse yourself in the wider world. So when a child turns back and says “I love you” or makes you a gift of their most precious possession, of course we are touched. Our  love is reciprocated. They haven’t left us yet.

And even when they do, we have their gift still, an anchor to a moment that was as precious to us as their gift was to them, before they gave it away.