The Bribe That Worked

Jack left one week ago for China. I wrote about it here. Before he left, Ed and I bought a new mattress and received a "free" Kindle Fire tablet with our purchase. We, in turn, gave it Jack so that he could keep a stack of e-books with him on his journeys. But, the gift came with a condition: we asked if he would send us a blog entry, describing his trip and impressions of China. This morning, I received his entry. Here it is. The bribe worked. 

Thank you Buddy.

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.

Maman asked me to write a blog entry a while back, but I had trouble getting started. I was fortunate to stumble on this poem in a Billy Collins collection, The Trouble with Poetry. The poet expresses a lot of the feelings I had been feeling. How's a dinky little blog post supposed to repay a mother's love?

The last week has been crazy. It started out at Farm Dover, where I was surrounded by beauty, filled with good things to eat, my every whim satisfied by maman and dad. We had more tomatoes and okra than we could eat. Most always there was something good to watch on the DVR. Then I flew to China. It took about thirty hours and was not very fun. Since then I've been doing my best to get settled in the big, hot, busy city of Shenzhen. I don't speak a lick of Mandarin, and my days are mostly made up of a series of embarrassments, frustrations and discomforts, one after the other. I sense keenly the distance between my current surroundings and my surroundings of a week ago and the distance between me and the people I love.

Nevertheless, I am very happy. I think I have my parents to thank for it. Paradoxically, the further away I go, the more I feel my parents' love. Firstly, there are the things they taught me: open-mindedness, toughness, patience, curiosity, etc. Then there's the knowledge that they are there in the house on Dover Road, thinking of me, worrying about me and praying for me. More comforting than a hot breakfast or a clean bed, that thought stays with me wherever I go. Without it, I couldn't hope to face the day.

__________

Note to readers: We skyped with Jack last weekend and he arrived safely, but tired, in Shenzhen, China, and started teaching English this week at Shenzhen Second Experimental School. He has found someone to teach him Mandarin and connected up with a friend from University. Yesterday, he played guitar and sang with a band during an open mike night. I think he will be just fine. 

Debut in Shenzhen. Photo by Jubil K. Wrong