🛫 Travelling With Dad (aka The Airport March and Other Childhood Traumas)

There’s a very specific memory that lives rent-free in my brain — and it plays out in every airport I’ve walked through since the '90s.

We’d barely step inside the terminal and Dad would be off.

Ten steps ahead, passport in hand, striding like a man on a mission no one else had been briefed on.

Muttering things like “the line’s already massive”, even though check-in hadn’t opened and the flight wasn’t for three more hours.

He took travel seriously.

He wore the travel wallet.

He printed the boarding passes.

Before I could even finish saying “Should we grab a snack?”, he’d whip around mid-step, already shaking his head.

“No. No snacks. It’s a rip-off.”

As if he was going to have to remortgage the house for a bag of chips.

Meanwhile, Mum would be in duty-free testing hand cream, holding three boarding passes in one hand and all of our carry-on bags in the other.

Somehow still smiling. Still managing the snacks. Still finding time to say, “We’re fine, just relax.”

And of course he’d always be the first to the gate.

Standing there. Watching. Waiting.

Even if the flight was delayed.

Even if the screen still said “gate opens in 48 minutes.”

Mum would roll her eyes and mutter, “Oh yay. Let’s play the hurry-up-and-wait game. My favourite.”

Then she’d calmly pull out a packet of salt and vinegar chips — the exact ones she’d secretly bought — and offer them around like it was Communion.

He didn’t do it to be mean.

It was just his version of being prepared.

He genuinely believed that if we weren’t at the gate two hours early, we’d end up stranded, deported, or worse — late.

And it didn’t stop at the airport.

One time driving in Germany, he insisted we didn’t need directions.

“We’ll figure it out. I’ve driven in Europe before.”

Except… no German. No understanding of road signs.

And a very confident belief that “Ausfahrt” was a town we kept almost reaching.

We looped the same autobahn exit three times before I quietly said from the back, “I don’t think that’s a place, I think that just means ‘exit’.”

There’s something funny about it, though.

This quiet certainty that they know — even when they absolutely don’t.

And the way mums (or women in general, to be honest) are so calm… until they’re not.

Until someone gets lost.

Or cries in a train station.

Or gets blisters from walking “just a bit further” in 34-degree heat because someone didn’t want to look at the map.

I’ll never forget one flight when Mum had just had it.

She was furious she’d been assigned the row with the kids again — sticky hands, “are we there yet?”s, and the endless magic pen colouring books.

So, for the first time in her life, she took a Valium.

And slept.

For seven hours straight.

Meanwhile, Dad had to help us with sticker sheets and clean up the spilled juice, all while missing the in-flight movie and sweating through his polo shirt.

Every 10 minutes, he’d sigh and say, “This is ridiculous.”

We thought it was amazing.

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Travelling with Dads isn’t terrible.

It’s just… a bit stubborn. A bit chaotic. And very, very human.

And honestly? It makes the stories better.

The sighs. The snacks. The high-stakes gate-waiting.

And the quiet way they always double-check that everyone’s still got their passport — even after insisting they “don’t want to carry everyone’s stuff.”

It’s not perfect.
But it’s kind of perfect.

Especially in hindsight.