By a combination of circumstances, somewhat my “fault”, my University of Texas roommate Robyn ended up living quite near me in Europe: she has long been in Neuchatel, Switzerland; I lived for 17 years nearby in Italy, first in Milan, later on Lake Como. So we used to exchange visits fairly regularly. We especially enjoyed going up there for the local wine festival every September. It wasn’t an internationally-famous event, but did draw visitors from outside the region.
One memorable year, we stayed late at one of the tents, sitting at long, communal tables, eating good, rustic food and drinking the more-than-decent local wine out of plastic cups. Buxom, middle-aged Swiss farm wives danced the Macarena on the tables, and a good time was being had by all.
In 1976, after a period of unemployment in Connecticut, my father accepted a job with Save the Children (US), as country head of their operations in Bangladesh. He and I and my stepmother Nancy moved to Dhaka (then spelled Dacca) around October, 1976. We didn’t take much with us. Our furniture, dishes, etc went into storage in the US. I took a few treasures – some board games, my plastic animals – and whatever warm-weather clothing I owned at the time.
Before leaving, we all got lots of vaccinations, and the dental work that we hadn’t been able to afford for a while – Nancy proved to have a mouthful of cavities.
I guess we flew from the US east coast to the west coast and then to Korea, where we were hosted by the Korean arm of Save the Children as an opportunity for my dad to learn from projects that the organization was carrying out there.
The name “Deirdre” has never been terribly popular in the US – it’s much more common in Ireland (logically – Deirdre is a character out of Irish myth) and somewhat common in England. But there are always a few of us, and we tend to notice each other.
Somewhere around my own generation, Deidra seems to have a popular variant among American blacks. And it’s very common for people (of any race) to mis-understand or mis-pronounce my name that way.
My grandparents owned a classic 1960s Volkswagen camper. I don’t know why they ever had it – they didn’t strike me as camping types. The VW camper was a classic hippie road trip vehicle, so it was fitting that when my father and I returned to the US in 1972, my grandfather gave it to him. I guess we drove it from Louisiana to Pittsburgh that year, via my aunt’s place in Texas.
In the summer of 1973 my dad, Nancy, and I set off on a classic hippie road trip in the camper. It had a fold-out mattress in the back that made a double bed for them. For me, Dad drilled holes in two metal pipes to fit over hooks he installed into the car’s frame on either side of the front seat. Nancy stitched a heavy canvas hammock that fit over the poles suspended above the front bench seat, and that’s where I slept while we were on the road. A curtain pulled across behind the seat gave them privacy.
My path to Australian citizenship was very quick and smooth compared to many others’ – I fully recognize my privilege in that I could afford a good immigration attorney to help smooth it. But there was a significant hurdle early on that derailed the process for nearly a year while I was still in the US.
To request the visa that would allow me to enter Australia, I needed certificates from California and the US federal government stating that I had no criminal record. Because I was applying for a partner/spouse visa, Brendan had to do the same. These reports are usually acquired by submitting fingerprints to the state’s department of justice and the FBI, which are checked against their databases of fingerprints.
As we quickly discovered, my fingerprints are nearly non-existent. Brendan’s were fine and his certificates arrived quickly. My requests were repeatedly rejected due to “fingerprint quality too low to be used”. We tried multiple times at various fingerprinting services. I followed all the tips from the FBI on improving fingerprint quality, even buying a substance called Ridge Lifter that they recommended. On one attempt, myself and the technician spent an hour trying to get a marginally-acceptable reading, using all the techniques recommended on the FBI website. Nothing worked. To add to the stress, the second round of attempts took place while California was under strict lockdown (fingerprinting businesses were allowed to be open, as essential services), when nobody wanted to be around anybody else, even masked.
