A Book of Poetry
by Lynne Schilling

Prelude

For my twin sons, Derek and Ethan

Years ago, when Paul Monette’s partner was diagnosed with AIDS, Monette wrote in his memoir, Borrowed Time, that was the day they began living on the moon. In June 1988 our family, too, began living on that start foreign landscape, after Derek, age 7, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, a pineal germinoma. What I remember most about Moon was the bitter lemony taste of exhaustion, heartbreak and rage, and the sounds of children crying (my own and others), made more difficult to endure because they mirrored my own silent wailing for what my children were experiencing. On Earth we played, went to school and work, picked up dry-cleaning, and ate well-balanced dinners around the small kitchen table. On Moon we worried and wept, grabbed candy from vending machines and limp sandwiches from hospital cafeterias, and crept through the maze of hospital corridors and cancer treatments. Five years later, just as we began to let out our collective breath, Ethan, age 12, was diagnosed with the same tumor. Circumstances pulled us back to Moon, and a revolution of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation began again. Having largely overcome the gravitational pull of the despair over Derek’s illness, we began stumbling through new craters of despair and anger. Eventually we resettled somewhere between Moon and Earth, and built a new life upon the improvised scaffolding of gratefulness and sorrow, relief and worry, memories and hopes. We live on Earth now, and though the past casts its shadow over us from time to time, we have pitched our tents in the sun.

2