An attempt at making it even...

Every morning on my ride to work I call her. Sometimes I am too tired to speak and of course there are those mornings when I am stressful mess looking for help on some silly trouble in my life (mornings are always a good time to let it out). But, most mornings I am just calling to hear her to say hi, have her tell me what she is eating for breakfast...and say "I love you Mom", and to hear "Love you Bird" on the other end of the phone

So yes, even though I left home many many years ago I will forever be the little girl that calls her mother every morning. She gives me so much... I only wish I could give her more than that daily phone call. But at least it's a start.

Mom introduced me to poetry. Starting with Joni Mitchell and ending with Elizabeth Alexander her love for poetry was given to me at birth. This however was a poem I gave to her many years ago, and every Mother's day I want to read it to her again... during my daily call.

This morning we were both in a rush so I didn't get to. So here it is now, hopefully she'll read it before the day is over.

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.

Happy Mothers Day Momma. xo.