This be I

One day last week the tots and I were running errands together out in town. Our tasks included picking up a birthday gift for one of L's friends, dreaming up Halloween costumes and planning a dinner menu.

Our first stop was the Starbucks drive-through. I had just secured cold drinks into the cup holders of our family SUV and we were pausing for some sipping and storytelling in the car before heading into Target to peruse plastic toys, when I started thinking about how ordinary and unsurprising my life had become.



I began to look around me and notice the things that define who I am these days -- a plastic dinosaur on the back seat, child-size sneakers on the floor mats, leather interior and a sunroof, Dr. Seuss on CD, a cup of iced coffee, a pair of little boys' undies nestled between lip gloss and a cell phone in my mama-sized purse. All of this fascinated me and I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures.



100 years ago, when I was finishing up my senior year of high school, we had this assignment in my AP English class where we each had to give a presentation about ourselves. My teacher titled this project "This be I" and it served as a sort of culmination of all we'd come to learn about ourselves through high school. It came at a pretty defining time in my life. I had just won my journalism scholarship, had decided on a college and was planning prom and graduation stuff. My "This be I" presentation focused on all of that, along with thoughts about my family and friends and all of the other things that are important to an 18-year-old girl.

While I sipped my coffee and snapped photos in the Starbucks parking lot last week, I began to think about what I would say in my "This be I" if I were given the assignment today. I'm on the eve of my 32 birthday. I have finished college. I moved away from home, accomplished some career goals, traveled, lost all of my grandparents, got married and had some children. These are -- with only slight variations -- the goals I had set for myself back in 1996.



There's nothing surprising about who I am today, except that for as predictable and mediocre as it looks, my adult life isn't a disappointment to me. In the window on the back of my camera, this all looks pretty boring -- a couple of cute kids, nice car, comfortable existence. But it's not boring. My days are full of remarkable complexity, bold colors, music, art, story-telling, drama, love, romance, disappointment, anger and sometimes insurmountable challenges.

So this week I'm devoting my posts to trying to record just how extraordinary my ordinary life is--to me. In short, this be I.