I don't feel in any way deprived. In order to experience deprivation, you need to know what you've missed. I grew up happy and fulfilled without ever stepping foot in a mouse-infested cabin. Sure, I regularly see a therapist, but that has little to do with my severe lack of summer camping when I was young.
Billy Collins writes about his summer camp days . . .
The Lanyard
by: Billy Collins
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.
Since I never had the summer camp experience, I never had the opportunity to make my mother a lanyard or diorama of the Last Supper made of popsicle sticks or rock painted with van Gogh's The Starry Night. I don't think she minded. She knew my tastes and temperaments weren't of the swimming-in-a-leech-infested-lake variety.
But she knew I loved poetry, and she encouraged me in this endeavor quite a bit. She was in the front row when I defended my theses for my MA and MFA. She attended most of my poetry readings prior to her Alzheimer's diagnosis. When I was named U.P. Poet Laureate for the first time, we went out to dinner at Red Lobster together. While I wasn't a typical son, I know my mother was always proud of my creative accomplishments.
And now I have another creative accomplishment. It's the lanyard I never made for my mom. You see, I've been working on a book of poems about Bigfoot for over 20 years now. It's been both blessing and curse. I literally never thought I was going to be done with it. Mom even heard some of my Bigfoot poems before she passed and loved them.
Here it is: I can finally announce that my poetry collection A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders will be released on October 1st. The Kindle version comes out September 28. That's right, I said Kindle. Soon to follow will be an Audible version, with your favorite saint reading the poems. And I'm over-the-moon and completely humbled at the same time.
You see, I wrote this collection simply because it was a book I wanted to read. I never thought it would have appeal to many other people outside my immediate family. Yet, here I am, getting ready to plan a book tour. Life really is strange.
My mom would have loved this book, I think, and not because I wrote it. The poems in it would have made her laugh. A lot. They may have even choked her up a little bit. (She was never much for crying.) Above all, she would have been proud of her son, the poet, even if he never made her a lanyard at summer camp.
Saint Marty hopes y'all will consider ordering a copy of his new book from Modern History Press:
