Mom the Mule

Blog-wise, I'm still catching up from vacation, and there was something I observed while spending untold hours in airports on our way to and from Tucson that cannot go unreported.

The first time I saw it, I thought it was a fluke. We were waiting to check in at the America West ticket counter in the Milwaukee airport when a family demographically similar to ours approached. The kids were each slightly younger than ours, maybe one and three. The mother, a small-framed blonde, was toting the smaller of the two in a front carrier while pushing a stroller occupied by the bigger child and laden with bags, presumably containing the countless items needed to keep a traveling kid happy.

And the father? He had a small gym bag over one shoulder, probably large enough to carry a single change of clothes (undoubtedly for himself), and--get this--one 8 1/2" x 11" Priority Mail envelope. Whoa, don't outdo yourself there, Pops.

This same scene was repeated over and over in Milwaukee, in Phoenix, in Tucson, and in Denver--mothers reminiscent of bag ladies with their overflowing shopping carts, pushing strollerloads of stuff and wrangling kids from arrival gate to departure gate, while the fathers walked a few paces ahead or behind, detached from it all physically and psychologically.

I'm happy to say that my beloved was not among the deadbeat dads and that he was not alone. Most of the men were indeed pulling their weight, at least in the figurative sense--but even in those cases, the mothers did so more close to literally.