Billy Collins
Quote
The Lanyard The other day I was ricocheting slowlyoff 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 dictionarywhere my eyes fell upon the word lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelistcould send one into the past more suddenly — a past where I sat at a workbench at a campby a deep Adirondack lakelearning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyardor wear one, if that's what you did with them, but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and againuntil 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 lightand 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 truththat 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 bethat this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
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| MOTHERHOOD | 11 clues |
| OVERPROTECTIVE | 1 clue |
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Related word tools
Often perfumed powder
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T
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A
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L
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C
Hint 1 meaning
A soft mineral of a soapy feel and a greenish, whitish, or
grayish color, usually occurring in foliated masses. It is hydrous
silicate of magnesia. Steatite, or soapstone, is a compact granular
variety.
Hint 2 anagram
TCLA
Hint 3 another clue
BABY DOCTOR FOR SHORT
7 +1