On Mother’s Day, I had to post this poem by Billy Collins.
I first heard Collins read this poem, driving through a blizzard in Michigan with my family. In a moment of raging, windy, white-out desperation, we turned on the radio, hoping for hope and a change in the weather, just over that hill, or that bend in the road that we could not see. Instead, we came across another kind of hope: A Prairie Home Companion, and Collins, reading this, his poem, “The Lanyard.” The kids were dozing, fretful, in the back seat. Greg was white-knuckled at the wheel. I was thinking, as I’m prone to do, that this was it, the end, and why oh why didn’t we pack the safety kit, the woolen blankets, the flashlight and thermos and nuts and berries and power bars?
What kind of mother was I, driving my kids into oblivion?
Then I heard Collins’ laconic voice, reading this, and I thought: a good enough mother. That’s what I am. Good enough. Human.
So here it is, in all its glory, still carrying me through to the next break in the weather.