05/10/2026
Happiest of Mothers Days to all Moms
Deepest love, respect, gratitude, and blessings every very thankful day. Enjoy.
Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me
By Maya Angelou
It is true
I was created in you.
It is also true
That you were created for me.
I owned your voice
It was the answer to every question.
A smile or a frown
Was the window through which I saw the world.
Now you are older.
Your voice is no longer the only one I hear,
But it is still the one I listen for.
Your smile is no longer the only window
Through which I see the world,
But it is still the one I look through.
When I am afraid, I remember you.
When I am happy, I remember you.
When I am lonely, I remember you.
When I am successful, I remember you.
It is true
I was created in you.
It is also true
That you were created for me.
I am your child.
The Lanyard
By Billy Collins
The other day I was walking through the upper sections of the New York Public Library,
a place where history is organized into a silence of books,
and I happened to fall upon the L section of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
I lifted the L volume to the edge of the table
and began moving my finger down the column of words
until I found what I was looking for: Lanyard.
No, it was not the word I was looking for;
it was the memory of a lanyard I had made as a boy,
at a camp in the Adirondacks,
a place of pines and mosquito-infested nights.
I sat at a wooden table in a room smelling of glue and cedar,
braiding together two thin strips of plastic,
one red and one white,
following the rhythmic pattern of over and under,
until I had a square-shaped cord,
a piece of plastic jewelry to present to my mother.
I had forgotten all about it until that moment,
the plastic smell of the craft room,
the sticky feeling of the glue on my fingers.
And as I stood there in the library,
the lanyard I had made came back to me
in all its humble glory.
I gave her a lanyard.
She gave me life and breath, a beating heart,
the true use of my arms and legs,
and a voice with which to say thank you
and to tell this story.
She gave me a body, and I gave her a lanyard.
She fed me from her own body, and I gave her a lanyard.
I remember the way she looked at it,
the way she held it in her hands,
as if it were a rare and precious jewel,
as if it were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
I stood there in the library,
the L volume of the encyclopedia still in my hand,
and I realized that I had never really thanked her,
not in the way she deserved.
I had given her a lanyard,
and she had given me everything.
And I saw that this was the way it had always been,
the way it would always be:
the child giving the parent a lanyard,
and the parent giving the child the world.
