Me, Abroad

When my daughter Shannon recently asked me what I wanted to name my blog, the first title I chose was "My Dailies." (One of my story titles was "Our Days, Eleanor's and Mine," a small tribute to both Eleanor Roosevelt and me for our shy beginnings, our warrior-like attitudes toward life, its challenges, our fortitude in facing them. Her daily newspaper article, "My Day," inspired me.) However, when my daughter checked, she found that "My Dailies" had been taken, so we had to decide on another title. I have also written several essays under "Me, Abroad," but that also was being used, so we segued into "Phyllis, Abroad" as the name of my blog.

But "My Dailies" refers to Melody Beattie's The Language of Letting Go and Iyanla Van Zant's Until Today!, the two inspirational paperback books that have aided me for more years than I care to count; have become my ritual each day to remember that I am a recovering person and need a regular shot of grounding. In my case, "Recovery" meant reinventing myself after many years of being someone's daughter, sister, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, widow (twice), friend, lover, etc. My particular drug-of-choice was not a substance, by my knee-reaction to the woes of my children; I took on their troubles as if they were my own, worried them like a dog with a bone, plunged in with both feet to keep the bad world from their doors. I finally realized that my pain was far worse than theirs, that I needn't take that first dip into their lives, that my influence was over. All I could offer was my support and love.

So it is all the more intriguing today that I face my daughter Carrie's surgeries in a far healthier state of mind than I could have in 1986, when I first started on my inner quest, a daily one, as it has turned out. I cannot imagine what tools I could have gathered then to help me through this test, or what support I could have offered.

We are in the 39th day since her diagnostic surgery to discover what the odd growth was that had appeared in her upper gum line. It is a desmoplastic ameloblastoma, a very rare (less than 100 cases worldwide are known), non-malignant, but spreadable tumor. We are still reeling, after 39 days, from the emotional, physical, and potential financial blows to our psyches! The one one-two to the gut is what we experience every time we keep another appointment with Dr. Traub; we leave his office doubled over with, and clutching tight to the grim reality that we somehow manage to keep hidden somewhere in the folds of our brains, between visits.

Each day we die and are reborn; literally, in some manner we are not the same people as yesterday. Our own private resurrections occur every day. Our other, and unfamiliar, "Dailies."