The One Who Knows (Dar Williams)

In a perfect world, every day should be Mother's Day... and Father's Day... and Earth Day... and Cinco de Mayo... and Talk Like a Pirate Day (aaarrrggghhh!) - having just celebrated the first of these occasions this past Sunday I can say, from experience, unconditional love always seems to manifest, albeit unintentionally, with strings attached. I tried to kick up the peace barometer and turn down expectation mode - not perfect... but better. I also read up on the history of what the day used to be before Hallmark took control - that's more like it!

SONG: The One Who Knows by Dar Williams

BOOK: The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown

POEM: 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.

QUOTE: "The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." ~ Honoré de Balzac