{"id":17791,"date":"2017-05-13T21:54:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T04:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/?p=17791"},"modified":"2017-05-13T22:01:34","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T05:01:34","slug":"mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/beautiful-people\/mothers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lanyard
\nThe other day I was ricocheting slowly
\noff the blue walls of this room,
\nmoving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
\nfrom bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
\nwhen I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
\nwhere my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.<\/p>\n

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
\ncould send one into the past more suddenly-
\na past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
\nby a deep Adirondack lake
\nlearning how to braid long thin plastic strips
\ninto a lanyard, a gift for my mother.<\/p>\n

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
\nor wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
\nbut that did not keep me from crossing
\nstrand over strand again and again
\nuntil I had made a boxy
\nred and white lanyard for my mother.<\/p>\n

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
\nand I gave her a lanyard.
\nShe nursed me in many a sick room,
\nlifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
\nlaid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
\nand then led me out into the air light<\/p>\n

and taught me to walk and swim,
\nand I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
\nHere are thousands of meals, she said,
\nand here is clothing and a good education.
\nAnd here is your lanyard, I replied,
\nwhich I made with a little help from a counselor.<\/p>\n

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
\nstrong legs, bones and teeth,
\nand two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
\nand here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
\nAnd here, I wish to say to her now,
\nis a smaller gift – not the worn truth<\/p>\n

that you can never repay your mother,
\nbut the rueful admission that when she took
\nthe two-toned lanyard from my hand,
\nI was as sure as a boy could be
\nthat this useless, worthless thing I wove
\nout of boredom would be enough to make us even.
\n– – Billy Collins<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lanyard 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17792,"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17791\/revisions\/17792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagayoga.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}