Right in front of us was a middle-aged dad, wearing khaki shorts and a golf shirt, holding a six-month-old baby. Stroller, diaper bag, carry-on bag, bottle, pacifier…All of us who’ve ever traveled with babies surely remember how much heavy, awkward, leaky junk you need to fly with an infant.
Airport Dad handled it all without breaking a sweat. He flung the diaper bag over his shoulder without jostling his drooling son. Then he folded the stroller with one hand while holding the baby securely in the crook of his arm. He had clearly done this many times before. His competence warmed my heart – just like Sting shirtless once did.
My seat was in the back row, so I passed the twosome again after boarding. Dad looked happy and baby was thrilled as they buckled in. The funniest thing was the expression on the women’s faces surrounding him. Pure rapture. Not because of infant envy – we weren’t looking at the baby. We were drooling over Airport Dad. Welcome to Father Envy.
I guarantee few of us would have looked twice at this man before we had kids. At first glance, Airport Dad was not handsome enough, tall enough, rich enough, or charismatic enough to catch anyone’s attention in a crowded airport. He looked like one of those nice guys in high school – your friend, but never your boyfriend. In the midst of our 20s, dating furiously, learning from awful relationships, working hard to make increasingly wiser mate-choices, how could we comprehend the bliss of having children with a man who could capably travel alone with a baby?
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Leslie Morgan Steiner authors Two Cents on Working Motherhood on MommyTrack'd. She is the editor of the best-selling anthology Mommy Wars and the brand new memoir Crazy Love. Steiner is a frequent guest on the Today Show, MSNBC, and regularly contributes to The New York Times, Newsweek and Vanity Fair. She lives with her husband and 3 kids in Washington, DC.
