When I first came to this country, it was only supposed to be temporary, 3 years at most is what I was told. Aside from few greetings and menu words, I did not speak a word of English. I only spoke Japanese. My mother thought language immersion to be the best method to acquire mastery over English …and so that first summer upon arrival, I found myself at a summer camp – a camp by a beautiful lake in the mountains… sink or swim? I had no friends, I knew not a soul at this particularly outdoorsy camp. Yet, somehow I managed to have a nice time, away from home, apart from my family, sleeping on cots in the woods, under the stars with girls I had never met before – and yes, all speaking a foreign language called … English. I still remember the beautiful camp counselors whom I looked up to with great awe as they played the guitar with grace and sang lovely folk songs I had never heard before.
Today, my mother’s method may have raised few eyebrows the way she just threw me into an unfamiliar surrounding but… I owe her my thanks. Out in the wilderness, in mother nature, unlike today – without electronic gadgets, I was left to my own devices. My first summer camp ever in my life with no comprehension of the language spoken there – It was definitely a language immersion at its finest (do I sound a bit cynical?).
Apparently my mother’s method of language acquisition was effective. Yes, it worked as today I am often flattered for being so bilingual & native-like for being accent-free… but I actually would not have minded retaining some Yoko Ono-esque accent to be “cool”.
This month we celebrated Mother’s Day. In their honor, I share this poem – Thank you, Mom – or “Mama”, how I still call her:) Whenever I look back, I am filled with gratitude for you made me find grace under pressure; you allowed me to suffer in order to make me resilient … and this poem with humor says it all.
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The Lanyard
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter (dates this poem doesn’t it? but timeless message) 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 the strand again and again until I made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me my life and mild 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 thousand of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and 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 sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
– Billy Collins
