Our Woman in Havana: A Parent Perspective

This is my drop-dead gorgeous, brilliant, adventurous, and deeply spiritual daughter Tobiyah.

 In this picture, she is pointing to the very first bull's-eye she made at the range, firing a Browning Buckmark Camper .22 LR target pistol. She loved the experience, although at first, she flinched every time someone in the adjacent lanes fired.

She is the second of my inherited daughters to have earned her college degree, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Kennesaw State University. She was not content with classroom experience; somewhere around here I have a picture of my living room packed with more than 20 foreign exchange students she brought over to the house so they could get exposed to more of the American experience.

Last weekend, she gave me my first surprise; I thought she was going to join the Women's March in Atlanta. Instead, she and her three sisters and at least one sister-by-affiliation took off for Washington. They spent the night before in West Virginia, where we have family and friends, and then on to DC the next day. I didn't really get a chance to talk with her much about the experience; the only (brief) conversation I had with her was to hear her say that they saw a lot of pro-life marchers, but only one Planned Parenthood sign.

I would have liked to have talked with her about it more, but on Monday, she hopped on a plane at Atlanta's Hartsfield International and flew to Cuba.

By herself. And by that, I mean: not traveling with friends or family; not traveling with a tour group. She just bought a ticket, and got on the plane.

No, I don't know why. No, I had no advanced warning. 

This is what happens when you raise independent, intelligent children. They do stuff. They push boundaries. They have adventures. 

And they leave anxiety-ridden parents in their wake, because :

THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!

If you have adult children of your own, you know what I am talking about. If not, you may remember something you did at that age. 

Me? I joined the Army. Just decided one day. Actually, there was more to the story than that, but that's for another time.

Oh, by the way: this isn't her first foreign experience. In this picture, we see her (far left) when she went to Nigeria last November to meet her biological father's family. Standing next to her is her older sister Jennifer; that trip included both of these gifted ladies.

Sweetheart, all I can say to you while you are in Cuba is to follow the same course of action you took in Nigeria:

DON'T EAT THE GOAT. 

YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT HAS BEEN.