On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

I have to give a gigantic hat tip to ScienceWoman from the ScienceWomen blog  for reminding me of this poem this morning. I first heard Billy Collins's The Lanyard in 2005 on Garrison Keillor's The Writers Almanac. I sat in my car and laughed so hard, and was so deeply moved, that I cried. It has remained one of my favorite poems.

Here is Billy Collins reading his poem:

When I first heard the poem I was not yet a mother. Since becoming a mother, its meaning for me has changed. Particularly striking to me now are the last few phrases:

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.

You see, the poem's author reaches the adult conclusion that he can never repay his mother for all she gave him. He seems to lament his childhood thoughts that he could demonstrate the equality of his love for her with a small, useless token. 

What I have learned in the time since becoming a mother is that each of those small, useless things are more repayment than our children will ever realize.  Each item represents some new endeavour.  Some new small skill learned.  Some developmental milestone reached and the tangible proof that somewhere in minds that move and change at a thousand miles a second, their mother remains there and that they've remembered us.

I know that, for me, my greatest goal in motherhood is to see my child develop into a kind, independently-thinking, well-educated young man.  Each of these trinkets he brings me represents a step towards reaching that goal.  The sheep he made me from a paper plate, cotton balls, glue, and drawn-on Sharpie face represents new knowledge about animals, new manual dexterity that allowed him to glue the cotton balls to the plate, and the creativity to decide that his sheep's eyes should be vertical instead of horizontal.  And then there is seeing the joy and pride in his eyes as he holds his accomplishment and presents it to me...

Maybe Billy Collins's lanyard wasn't worth much, but I bet his mother still treasured it.