A Cross on a Lanyard

Today is Easter.  As I was listening to the Deacon's homily I was meditating upon his words.  Deacon Rossini said we could never repay Jesus for what He did for us.  His suffering and death were something beyond our human capabilities to imitate.  We can never thank the Lord enough, nor more than we can thank our parents for their sacrifices for us.  

I was immediately thinking of the years of fertility tests and treatments, my husband and I underwent.  Then nine months of gestation.  One labor was 21 hours.  Another labor took place in my bedroom.  Nursing each of my three children for two years = six years of nursing.  Changing careers in order to accommodate a family life.  And I haven't mentioned the financial sacrifices!

These are things that can't be paid back.  There is nothing that equals these sacrifices.  Now think of Jesus' sacrifice.

Thank you Lord, for loving me.

Billy Collins alludes to this unbalance of sacrifice and gratitude in his poem, The Lanyard.  I copied and pasted it from The Poetry Foundation.  If this is not allowed, tell me and I'll remove it. Upon reading, the reader can identify with the feelings.  That's what Billy Collins is good at.

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.

 
“The Lanyard” from The Trouble With Poetry: and Other Poems by Billy Collins, copyright © 2005 by Billy Collins. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.