A hazy year

My husband has been home for 6 weeks, and in 2.5 weeks he will be leaving again, c'est la vie. After a year of being away from home, the 6 weeks he has been home for have gone by at whirlwind speed. We have been so busy that it has taken me a little while to realize just how much we were dealing with this time last year when trying to do all we needed to on opposite sides of the world...both expats in the countries we were living in...tasks like banking or renewing insurance are not always as simple as you would think.

Looking back on spending our first year of marriage on opposite sides of the world it seems a haze...probably because it was.

Trying to decide on re-homing or possibly euthanizing animals, packing up a house in a country you only relocated to a year before, moving across the world where it would take 3 days of travel to see family should any emergency occur.....its a decision that is particularly personal.

For the non-animal lovers its a simple 'why wouldn't you?!', on the swing side are the animal lovers who will say 'how could you even think of that – I would leave my husband before putting an animal to sleep!!!'.

For the people trying to escape their reality come the 'OMG Fiji – who wouldnt want to move Fiji!?'. For the people who are heavily rooted where they live comes 'Wow, I don't know that I could move so far away from my friends and family like that'.

Then come the work related comments 'well why cant he just get a job in Europe?' or 'surely that's not your only option' or better still 'why doesn't your husband just stop being a pilot and do something else?'.

Personal decisions are just that – personal...and so I found myself in a haze – locked in my own little bubble of trying to figure things out. I socialized little, took my dogs for long walks, and spent hours on Skype to my husband trying to figure out what the right answer was.

There were days of tears, days of hope, days of desperation – every option seemed to lead to a path of heartache. Days turned into weeks, then months – all a blur.

Looking back I realize that I learnt a lot in those 12 months, about myself, my marriage, my friendships – and in some strange way it was possibly one of the most intensely difficult and yet rewarding times of my life. When you know how much adversity you can face with any person, partner, friend, or family – there is enormous solace and gratitude to be found in that.

Everyone faces challenges, some are big, some are small, some are daily, and some are once in a lifetime. And when the battle is over and so much has changed, so much of ourselves has changed (some good, some bad) – that we cannot go back to what we were before....that's ok, because we are all just trying to survive this glorious, messy, beautiful thing called 'life'.

Home coming...and reflections

It's hard to believe that after just over a year (quite literally) on opposite sides of the world, my husband is coming home :) It has been a long, hard 365+ days - but it has also not been without many a life lesson.

Fiji is not a place that many from Europe or Africa visit - there is the enormous distance, the cost of flights, the over inflated tourist hotel prices etc etc So for all the difficulties, I do feel privileged for the opportunity to have spent some time there - albeit only for five weeks. The people of Fiji have a fascinating history and an old culture that is slowly being stamped out by the modern world. There is deep embarrassment over their past - over cannibalism and believing in a variety of Gods and Deities. I find this rather gut wrenching - I would really rather learn about another culture than be told 'Look how far we have come - we have a Mcdonalds'.

Postcards of Fiji show the tourist hot spots, five star resorts that are so exclusive one has to take a second mortgage on ones home to pay the bill. However beyond the glitz and the glamour lies the real Fiji. The Fiji that reminds me of Africa. A country split in two with little in the way of the 'middle line'. There are the 'haves and the have-nots'. In Africa, in general, this has resulted in conflict, desperation, soaring crime, and general misery. Yet somehow Fiji manages to fight through the same difficulties with many still holding a smile on their faces. Yes there is crime, health problems, too many stray animals...but people still seem to try and look for the good.

There is a lot to be learned from that....is it really a crises that when you went to the shops and out of the range of 40+ brands of cereal they didn't have your favorite sugar-laden, mass produced, box of zero nutritional value food? Is it not a somewhat surreal feeling to know that whilst you bemoan this, someone, somewhere in the world is barely getting by with a couple of pieces of fruit and water from a river that is also used as a bath? Personally, I often wonder, what would life have been like if I had been born into a different family, under different circumstances....Perspective - unfortunately it's something that is often not easy to obtain when sitting in one place, especially in a comfortable place.

One million and twenty eleven flying hours

Ok so the heading of this blog post will really only be understood by South Africans, but I couldn't resist.

My husband is home soon from a really, really, REALLY ruddy long 'tour' on some exotic island in the Pacific. When I say long, I mean 310 out of 365 days away from home long. He went, because well, it was a pretty decent job, in a pretty decent company, on a pretty decent aircraft that he...you guessed it, had the opportunity to build some good hours on.

I worked in aviation and I am married to a pilot, and I really have to say that I have come to believe that if there is one absolutely unobtainable thing in this world - it is the perfect number of flight hours on the right aircraft at the right time. There seems to forever be a requirement to chase another number, get more flight hours on a turbo prop, get more command hours, the hours need to be on a heavier aircraft, you need jet time. Hours, hours, hours - the more you get of them, it seems the more you need. Only to get the jobs you need to increase your hours or to get onto the aircraft you want -  you need to have a certain amount of hours in the first place. It reminds me a little of our presidents attempt at reading numbers...a real struggle, with success generally only ever coming from a huge smattering of good luck!

I have the privilege of knowing a couple of guys sitting on 15 000+ hours on a variety of aircraft and I can pretty much guarantee they have at least once in their lifetime looked at a job posting for their dream job and gone 'Well dammit, I'm just 20 hours short to apply for this' 

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 ;)