Mom

I really do think I have the most amazing mom on the planet. I might be a bit biased, but I've had friends tell me that's true, so I'm just going to believe them. I wish I had profound words to write about all the lessons she has taught me, and all the ways I am the person I am today because of her, but I'm pretty sure no amount of words could capture how much she means to me.

Watching her become a grandma for the first time this past year has been such a delight because I can see firsthand how much she loves and cares for Lily SO well, and I know that same love and care were given to Megan and I before we were old enough to realize what was going on. I know that when we have kids she'll be just as present and will love our little ones just as much as she loves Lily, they will be so lucky to have her as Grandma.

Mom, as I think about you today, here are just a few things that are part of who I am that I know came directly from you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the ways you helped make me, me. Especially thank you for:

helping me learn to LOVE books, to always have a book around.

Teaching me the joy of washing and eating something directly from the garden on a hot summer evening.

For never comparing Megan and I, but letting us each be our own person and loving us exactly as we were.

Instilling in me a love of all kinds of vegetables--well, with a few exceptions (no, I will still not eat cooked spinach or beets...)

Teaching me to be a friend. You are an amazing friend, so faithful and so present when one of your friends needs something, I learned a lot watching you share life with people around you.

Showing me that true joy comes from serving first--making sure we never celebrated our own Christmas until we had first gone and served somewhere. You still volunteer all the time, which I know is something you received from your mom.

For all the long distance cooking help and over the phone medical diagnoses!

I could go on and on and on. Instead, I thought I'd share a poem that our pastor read in church this morning, a poem by Billy Collins, an incredible American poet from our modern era. Its called The Lanyard, I hope you all enjoy it, and happy Mother's Day to all the amazing moms out there!

The Lanyard - 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.