Making us even

I'm sitting in Panera at my writing group meeting, and I've been working on a short play about parenthood (naturally), and it has me reflecting on a poem I taught when I was a high school English teacher. It affects me so much more now that I've been doing this mothering thing for a little while (I was pregnant at the time but hadn't met my son yet).

In "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins, the poet reflects on a gift he made for his mother as a child--a crude lanyard he made at camp, and the crazy notion that this present was adequate gratitude for all his mother had done for him:

"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-toned 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."

There was probably a time when I believed similarly about my own mother. Of course, as all children do, I took my mother for granted, or focused on her failings, not seeing what was right in front of me--a woman who sacrificed everything to care for me, who wore worn-out clothes and bought nothing for herself, who stayed up with me at night when I had colic and cried at night worrying about me. I don't think I could truly understand until I became a parent myself. The love, the worry, the sacrifice. There was no way I could ever make it even--and I'm not supposed to. But the gratitude I feel now is long overdue and filled with empathy because I'm going through it too.

That's what my play is about. It's not really my mother and I, but on some level it is. It's a small way to say thank you to my mother, and to all mothers who sublimate themselves in a million ways every day to take care of their children. There can be no repayment--only gratitude. I am the product of deeply selfless love, and I am eternally thankful.