The Year My Birthday Was in Summer

By Rita Bova

Professor Bova artfully portrays Australian family life with its unique customs and culinary recipes. Also featured are the Nynoogar Aboriginal Tribe and its outback ways including spiritual retreats and outdoor cooking. A forbidden love couple with her traveling experiences makes for a mesmerizing read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781619845930

Book preview

PLANE

PROLOGUE

THE YEARS MY BIRTHDAYS

WERE NOT IN SUMMER

Birthdays in Toledo, Ohio, in the 1950s and 1960s were almost constantly with my family of eight children, mother and father. As a result, most of these yearly events passed without fanfare except for my mother’s ice cream cake made from the favorite ice cream of the birthday child, along with the angel food cake and a few candles.

My birthdays usually didn’t even have the luscious cake, since it occurred during Lent and as such was during the dullest, greyest, and most tedious part of the year. In fact, my parents often escaped to Florida for two weeks during the beginning of March because the world outside was cold, clammy, and colorless.

Lucky for me in the Lucky Country (Australia), all of this was about to change.

CHAPTER 1

NOW ONTO MY NEW LIFE

CHAPTER 1

NOW ONTO MY NEW LIFE

Turquoise, turquoise, and shimmering white, the sea and land shine like mirrors as we land in Sydney. After a grueling 19-hour flight, I am dazed as we come into the airport and we skip over Sunday into Monday. Missing my plane connection to Perth because of the race ahead of time, I am stressed, trying to decide what to do. The next fight isn’t until Wednesday morning, and this is Monday. I hurry over to the airline’s clerk and ask about going stand-by some time that day. His glare at me looks like a person closing his car window, raising it quickly, as he says, There are no flights until Wednesday, period. I am worried since I know my Rotary counselor will be waiting for me while I am still in Sydney!

So, here I was in a new and glittering land, looking like the sorriest person on the planet. Australia seemed like a mixed-up and frightening prospect then compared to my mundane and predictable world back in Columbus, Ohio. I soldiered on mainly because what else was there to do? I had little inkling of the dramatic and poetic days ahead; of a secret and intimate affair lurking just around the corner; and of traveling in the interior with my beloved Aboriginal mates Vivienne and Lorna. A new and brighter me would emerge from this wonderful world.

ARRIVING ON A JET PLANE

Heaven exists. I know. I’ve been there. Spending 14 months in Australia was glorious for me, but it was a real struggle when I first arrived. The dream down under was a nightmare that July of 1983 when I traveled to Oz as a Rotary International Scholar.

Remembering those days today is a bittersweet experience for me. I became a new PH.D. Entering academia at a community college in Ohio when I realized how much I had alienated my boss during my obsessive career process. Besides teaching non-stop, I was also a writer at an interactive television station, the only one then or since that has ever existed. Mesmerized by the glamour of television, I soon started to ignore my real teaching job and had started to let some of my classes slide.

In the early 1980’s, I was a 36-year-old woman who was really starting to panic about her future. After a 5-year intense relationship with a brilliant and handsome mathematics professor, I was a lonely and troubled traveler of life still looking for some way of finding meaning. John, my former companion and lover, had seemed like the man for me. We had a witty and intelligent, yet smoldering love affair and even my father thought I had found Professor Right. But, John’s phobia against ever having children even if we had married made my leery and angry. Eventually, I chose to go it alone.

Finishing my doctorate, I was at a crossroads in my life for I needed and wanted to be more; I felt vulnerable, lonely, scared, and reckless. I was obsessed with discovering a new love, a new world, and a new me. Now, all of these new experiences were on the breathtaking horizon.

My boss and I had several bitter confrontations, and soon I realized I had to do SOMETHING. That SOMETHING turned out be a Godsend. I won a Rotary International Scholarship and was off to the West Australian Institute of Technology in Perth, West Australia. Now I had the chance to start over, but was terrified at the prospect. It sounds perfect, but the original experience was almost anything but.

LONELY, UNMARRIED, VULNERABLE

What to do for two whole days while waiting for a plane? I had brought $450.00 with me, but the Sydney Hilton was $200 a night. Homeless, I decided to call friends of a Columbus friend to ask what to do now. Gwenda and Richard, now beloved and treasured Aussie friends, must have thought I was a true Idiot. Generous as they were, they drove right out to the airport and picked me up. I, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, stayed with them while I tried to pull myself together. At an elegant dinner they took me to overlooking Sydney’s scenic harbor, I even vomited.

The Bates family is a golden Aussie family who radiated generosity and caring towards me. Gwenda, the mother of the family, along with Richard, her husband, and their two sons Andrew and Stephen, became my closest friends in Sydney. From their engaging Aussie accents to their vibrant way of life, their home became my home in Sydney.

My arrival couldn’t have been too impressive to them: I missed my plane, world all askew around me, my marine-like hair cut above fat and swollen, rumpled, bedraggled self. They rescued my anyway. Later, when I came back to Sydney during Christmas, the family and I spent the day after Christmas at Bondi Beach. Together, lapping up the sun and surf, feeling the freedom of a world unfettered by Christmas commercialism. Of course then, too, I was much freer myself, caught up in a passionate affair with a married Canadian man. The city of Sydney will always be for me a place of wild joy, abandonment, and beauty.

PERTH, WEST AUSTRALIA

Finally, I was on my way to Perth and my new life of being a student and a Rotary Ambassador. Even so, those first few weeks in Perth were turbulent ones and I came close to leaving and returning to Columbus, Ohio. Although I almost didn’t come back home or go anywhere at all, or maybe to the true heaven above! My Rotary counselor, Phil, and his wife, Lynne, were there to greet me as I stepped off the plane. Phil, a jocular, impish sort of man and Lynne, his redheaded German teacher wife, took me to their home. They didn’t seem to go together but had a vibrant relationship nevertheless. I stayed at their home for a few days, but their constant smoking made my living there unbearable. They were generous and fun loving, but I guessed they wanted me gone, too, because I am sure they expected a 20-ish student and not the 36-year old misfit that I was. I was almost their age and our relationship was a strained one at best. I needed to find a place to live since classes were soon to begin and I was anxious to start my new Aussie life.

Thus, I was looking at apartments and trying to find my niche with practically no money. I ended up moving four times. What a strain, feeling so rootless and uncertain as to what to do. My last place to live before finally getting a single room at the Rotary House at the West Australian Institute of Technology was with several hard partying Aussie students. The duplex home they were renting was filled with smoke, booze, dirty dishes, dust, and upheaval everywhere. The last night I was there, I had a severe asthma attack and stayed up all night because I couldn’t breathel. I was convinced that it was going to be my last night on earth, but somehow I survived that terrifying night, suffering and worrying and alone. I even decided to return to the U.S.A. since my life in Australia almost wasn’t and clearly wouldn’t be stable.

FEBRUARY, 1984--ROTARY PARTY

Phil Dempster & wife Lynn (center)

Lynne Dempster

Fortunately, I finally found a home at the Rotary House, the only dorms at WAIT, and a single room, which provided a cozy place for me to thrive. My room faced a pond where birds gathered each morning, a glorious and dynamic beauty of sight and sound. I also awoke to the call of the Kookaburra across the way in the bush lands surrounding the campus. My new life was not starting to come alive for me and I felt anxious and eager as to what it would be like. Although I still felt like an outsider, I had the exciting promise of living in a world exotic and unusual with a whole new spectrum of experiences.

Being in Perth made my Aussie experiences more authentic and more colorful. What a glorious city! Edging the Indian Ocean with its long, leisurely beaches and its bright blue water, Perth is a true sparkling gem. Separated from the rest of Australia by the Simpson Desert and thousands of miles of arid bush lands, Perth doesn’t have as many people or the constant traffic that Sydney has. Many Australians never even get over to Perth, so my living there accentuated the primary and pristine beauty of Australia. Part of my soul still lingers in that lovely and alluring place.

Lorna Little, Alice Wann, Annette, Cynthia, Vivienne Fuller

Rotary House 1983

The Rotary House was home to a few Aussie students and several international students such as myself. It boasted several buildings with each floor hosting its own group of people with a kitchen, shared baths and showers. Each person had his or her own room on the floor. My dorm floor housed only women, for which I was glad, for the other floors were coed and had several romances blooming and there were parties every weekend, all weekend. I was unusual in that I was a 36-year old American woman to the normal 18-year old Aussie women all around me. Seeing life through their eyes made my experience in Australia even deeper and more profound.

I vividly recall the first morning I shared brekkie with my flat mates, who spent the morning baking fresh cheese scones with pure butter and white tea. I was amazed at the homemade cheese biscuits topped with butter, as vibrant and sunny as my mates. Capped with white tea, tea made with fresh milk, the breakfast was classic and lovely. Below is the recipe.

Easy Cheese Scones, adapted from Angela [e-mail], 2003.

Bake in a preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes, or until light brown. Serve hot or let cool on a wire rack.

I became close friends with several of the Aussie ladies I lived with. Jennie, an 18-year old from Kalamunda, part of the green hills which surrounded Perth, was a curly haired, loving, angular, engineering major. Her Aussie accent and her rebellious ways were captivating and I later went with her to Sydney over the Christmas holidays. Lorna, even older than myself, was an Aboriginal lady who became the first Aboriginal woman to graduate from the West Australian Institute of Technology. Lorna, with her cream-colored skin, bright eyes, and gentle manner is one of the most beautiful women (physically and spiritually) I have ever known. Lorna’s husband, Horace, suffered a massive heart attack during a soccer match and died. They were betrothed through the Noongar Tribe. Lorna’s father had been the chief and Horace’s father had been the medicine man. They had had a loving marriage and two children. Horace’s death was a tragic blow to Lorna. Their Noongar tribe no longer existed and the suffering of the urban life could be seen in Lorna’s poignant face. As we were both poets and writers, my bond with Lorna was and is a profound one.

Lorna has a sister Vivienne who didn’t live with us, but became my closest and most treasured Australian friend. Vivienne, like her name, is a vibrant and buoyant woman who literally took me all through Western Australia. Our free-spirited travels all through the Outback were fulfilling a true fantasy for me.

Eva Gajda,