The man I love turned 50 yesterday.
A milestone event, cataclysmic in its ordinarity really. Just live long enough and you too will reach this day. And yet, it moves the ground beneath you, Makes you stop and pause. 50 is for grownups, for less life to live than lived (more than likely), for adult-decisions, and adult wisdom.
And so we celebrated in a busy ordinary day. Squeezed in a birthday song before drop off and pick up. Planted birthday flags in a school dinner for the Project Pig meal our daughter had been a part of with a local butcher (Danish schools are wild). Fell asleep on the couch at 9, filled with love, and also all of the responsibilities of two working adults with 4 children.
This morning, the alarm still rang at 4:30. The tea tasted the same. The bubble of excitement for the weekend felt familiar. He didn’t look any different. Our love hadn’t changed.
Life is lived in the ordinary. In the moments of familiarity, in the ease of the couch cushions that embrace us on good days and bad. In the routines that keep this neurodivergent household afloat. We long for freedom in our weekends. We celebrate the big moments, the befores and afters that mark the turning of the page. But really, life is lived in the ordinary.
It makes me think of our reading identities. That we may have the markers of the big experiences – the first book you couldn’t put down, the book you had to share, the first book we ever read to show the map of you. But the steps in between, those are ordinary events if we make it.
The invitation to read every day, for every child. The read aloud that children can count on will happen during the day, with voices, of course. The everyday access to books of their choosing. To have adults who care about the way they experience those books. The questions posed about who they are as readers and who they want to be. The books returned, the books abandoned, the books finished.
All ordinary moments.
Or they should be.
Because we build a life in the ordinary.
We build our reading identity in the flow of access. In the invitations into reading that happen every day. In the steady faith that reading is a place for all children, and adults, to find a home, even if it feels unfamiliar and wasteful right now.
The door remains open. There is no time limit on becoming a reader. There is no extraordinary celebration you must attend in order to be made a reader. You show up, you try, and you try again.
And we keep that door open for all. We fight the poor policies that shut the door on our readers. We fight the bans. We fight the lethargy.
We reserve the right to make reading an ordinary experience, one to be counted on, much like the school bell will ring. Kids should be able to count on that books, and reading, and moments of silence await them in our spaces. Not just on special days, but on every day.
This afternoon, I will run errands, get my flu and covid shots, and gather our family for our weekly Friday night movie night. If the movie is terrible, I will read alongside them, present but engaged in my own make believe world. Tomorrow morning, I will go run on a treadmill, do my laundry, and walk my garden.
Mundane perhaps, ordinary, yet extraordinary in that I get to live it.
I keep the door open to my ordinary life so that we can look back and see it for its beauty, for what it really was. A life lived between breaths. A reading journey built between pages.
Won’t you live an ordinary life with me?