The African Starbucks and Adam

We live in a very diverse area of Virginia. Some people believe that Northern Virginia should secede from the rest of the state because our values are so different. We don't hold that it should be okay to let people into bars with guns (just so they don't drink, wink wink!). We don't believe in limiting the rights of immigrants, homosexuals, or people without health care. (or at least most of us don't) And we regularly rub elbows with people from all over the world.
I stopped in at a Starbucks in an area we call Bailey's Crossroads. Someone else can tell you who Bailey was, I'm sure, but I know it as the area to which we took our daughters when they were little for shopping and dining. There are several ethnic restaurants and food stores there. I was on my way to the Greek store, Aphrodite Greek Imports, to be exact, to pick up my Easter supplies. I walked into this Starbucks and immediately felt like I was in an African coffee shop, if African coffee shops are anything like Greek ones. It was filled with men: Sitting, talking, laughing, and drinking down lots of caffeine. The tired clerk told me many of them were Somalis. I briefly thought of pirates, and banished that thought from my mind as I sat down with my laptop to catch up on email.
Next to me was this lovely man, whose child, Adam, was running around the store, being tickled and teased by the other patrons. Since, perversely, this atmosphere made me feel right at home, I struck up a conversation with the father, and learned that Adam, who was just two, wouldn't leave the house without a shirt and tie! "He has more ties than I do!" He said that Adam was a little behind, verbally, and walked late, but Dad was reading on the internet about child developoment and learned that children develop at different rates. I applauded his efforts to learn about his child. He wasn't worried that his neice "walked and talked at nine months" because he'd read that boys were late developers. Here was an obviously north African man (he spoke Arabic with someone who came in) discussing child development with a strange woman. At a Starbucks filled with Somali men!
What a wonderfully colorful area we live in. I wish the rest of Virginia could come here for vacation, not to the District to see memorials and museums. They could sit with people from Africa, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, and on and on drinking coffee and discussing their children. But they would have to leave their guns at home!