A Spouse’s View of the Life of a Pilot
“My husband (she says) is a typical pilot. He’s an overgrown kid. His planes are the toys he plays with. When you live with a pilot, that’s something you get used to. It’s the curse of these guys – but it’s what keeps up their energy levels.
“Life with a pilot is one of feast versus famine. They’re either off somewhere flying, or else around causing trouble for you. It’s like living with a retiree. You think, Why doesn’t he get out of here? Then suddenly, he’s gone, and you say, “When is he coming home again?
“Unlike those women who depend on their husbands (‘Could you talk to our lawyer’ ‘Could you spank our son this evening?’), the wife of a pilot has to learn self-sufficiency. When a problem comes up, she has to handle it like a single woman. The joke in our family is that my husband is, ‘The Phantom.’ Some of our friends think that our children are fatherless. Even my mother says she suspects I just rented him. She says I paid him five dollars to say ‘I do’ at the wedding ceremony.
“I feel that we are on the brink of an area of expansion of knowledge about ourselves and our surroundings that is beyond description or comprehension at this time…Our efforts today and what we’ve done so far are but small building blocks on a very huge pyramid to come…Knowledge begets knowledge. The more I see, the more impressed I am not with how much we know but with how tremendous the areas are that are as yet unexplored.”
~ U.S. Marine Corps Lt Col John H. Glenn, Jr., addressing a joint session of Congress six days after orbiting the earth three times in a Mercury space capsule, Friendship 7
“The thing about my husband is that his moods are so cyclical. He’ll appear at the door. I haven’t seen him for weeks now. Suddenly he’s home, and it’s like being on a honeymoon. We’ll spend hours in bed. We’ll spend days catching up with each other.
“But then, after a while, I start noticing the symptoms.
I’ll look at my cupboard. All my cans have become alphabetized. When I open the freezer, all the fruit juice is color coded. I watch him get antsy. I can see the time weighing on him.
“Then off he goes again – and I’m left with PTA meetings. I shortcut the laundry. I cheat on my kitchen duty. During the days he was home we had pot roasts and veal dishes. Now the children and I will have Domino’s Pizza. It’s a crazy kind of life, but it’s the life that I’m used to. It’s the life our friends lead. And as for thunderstorms and microbursts and takeoff crashes, I’m used to those worries. Over the years, I’ve become hardened to them.”