Homecoming

 

Hubby returns from Bangladesh today and the house is full of excitement.  My favorite part of his homecomings is watching our Baby Girl, now 18, light up when I announce, "Homecoming Day!!" She has always been Daddy's little girl, and she wears this badge with pride!

Over the years they have been connected by their motorcycle fanaticism and a deep seeded need for adventure. It started early with dirt bikes... watching her Dad race hare scrambles in the palmetto ridden woods of Florida.  Soon she was riding alongside him. When we moved to Texas, the dirt bikes gave way to bigger machines. 

Then came the impossible question: would a teenage girl want to take a cross country trip to see the back roads of America? With her father?  On a motorcycle?

Without blinking an eye, the answer was YES!  This set in motion three summers of endurance riding across America with the goal of seeing every US state and the majority of Canada before Baby Girl graduated high school.  The trip through the Yukon Territory and into Alaska was by far the most perilous with snowy steep mountain roads, free roaming bison, constant rain and the need to wear every item of clothing they packed just to stay somewhere above freezing. 

 In the summer of 2010, the travel goal had to be delayed while Baby Girl had open heart surgery.  By 2011, she was back on Dad's Harley and racing into Michigan, Maine, and Connecticut on an Eastern US tour.  The bond these two share just melts my heart.  They are one in the same and driven to go farther, see more, and be a part of the greater picture.

This also scares me.  The same traits that made me fall so in love with Hubby are the very traits I see burning wildly in our soon-to graduate Baby Girl.  There is fire in her eyes of working in Africa, on world relief missions, and getting the hell out of Houston (which is a dream we all share!).  There is the realization that she is 18 and free to go where she chooses and I sense the wheels already turning on short term summer trips.  She is like her Dad in every way. Stubborn and ready to take on the world.  I can only imagine that in time I will be running in to announce to Hubby, "Baby Girl is coming home today!!" and he will light up just as brightly as she does for him.

 

LOVE  &  HOMECOMINGS!