Christmas ~ not always a time for family

It's Christmas...that time of year when everyone rushes about asking everyone else what they are doing for the holiday season, or Christmas lunch, or New years eve. People worn out by a long year of work suddenly have a little more lift in their step and hum along to Christmas songs blaring out of every shopping mall speaker.

It is the season of family, roast lunches and long dinners that stretch into the early hours of the morning. It is the time when people don't have to work and instead enjoy (or don't) time with loved ones - with holidays often planned months, sometimes years in advance.

However, for some - Christmas is not the picture perfect family adventure.Some may be sitting in old age home - alone, sad and cherishing bygone times of family being together. Others may be sitting in a childrens home - wishing and dreaming of the day they have a family of their very own to spend Christmas with, missing their own family they may or may not have ever known.

There are those working across the festive season - pilots, hosties, aircraft engineers, doctors, policemen, paramedics, military personnel, nurses, firemen...when one stops to think about it the list of those who will not be sitting at the family table is actually quite long.

So this Christmas, take a little time to think of those who may not be as fortunate as others in their celebrations.. If you are lucky enough to have some spare change, have a couple of chocolates in your car/handbag and randomly give them out, along with a big festive smile -  to policemen, paramedics, homeless people or old neighbors you know are alone...after all, it is the time to be thankful and a time of giving, and you never know - your smile could change someones entire festive season!

Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome

A lot of people you meet will wonder why, when they almost knock you out with excitement at hearing you are married to a pilot, your response is to mumble a barely audible & very unenthusiastic 'yes, fantastic'. The fact is that 99% of people truly do not understand the difficulties that come with trying to maintain a healthy relationship/family life when working in aviation, and explanations fall on deaf ears.

Marriages in aviation seem to be so difficult to maintain that even the community itself has coined a term for them failing - 'Aviation Induced Divorced Syndrome - AIDS'. Marriages are hard enough to maintain under 'normal' circumstances, let alone when you throw something like aviation into the mix. There are an enormous of pilot wife (and pilot, cabin crew) blogs on the internet covering the subject of how one can actually keep a relationship/family going. There are some who have jumped on the 'co-pilot' wagon with relative ease and others saying they would never again choose to go through it.

I think for a large number of the population they can only relate a pilots work and travel to the annual boys weekend, or company function their husband goes on for a week of the year. So they imagine a few days of heavenly relaxation on their own, followed by missing their partner for a couple more days, nearly dying of boredom, panicking their partner may be cheating on them (this doesn't apply to all - the cheating or the panicking) and then their partner being home and life carrying on as normal.

This is pretty different to life when you partner travels for extended period of times (4-12wks away, 2-4 weeks home - or any rotating schedule). In short - these types of relationships can most likely only be understood by the average person as being similar to dating-breaking up-dating-breaking up (repeat for the duration of your life married to a pilot).
When your partner is home you spend the first week getting used to living with someone again and the last week dreading their departure. The in-between is wonderful yet exhausting: trying to balance family time, friend time, and quality time together, whilst also getting anything else done that requires the two of you (or just your husband). In some instances there may be required to be reminders of where house hold items are stored if like in my instance, your partner has only been home once in 10 months. Once they leave, you have the choice to mope around miserably for the duration of their tour (in which case you are likely going to become parts of the AIDS statistics), or pick yourself and be more fiercely independent than most single women....whilst not actually being single. When your partner returns home, repeat the above exercise whilst loving your pilot and not becoming a contributor to the AIDS statistics ;)