Amanda van Scoyoc

I live in Eugene in half of a yellow house that has wood floors, two bedrooms, and a fireplace. We finally have pictures on the wall. We have hung Eli’s grandmother’s paintings, my paintings, Eli’s photography, and a few adored wedding presents from friends. When the walls were bare, it didn’t feel like home, but now it is getting close.

We finally found a sofa on craiglist. It is now overlooks the fireplace and Eli and I sit there in the mornings and in the evenings working on our respective projects. Eli builds fires at night. After a long day, I bike home (often in the dark and in the rain), and I still have more that I have to do. But I come home to Eli, and dinner, and late night fires. So far, he hasn’t quite got it down. The fires die out rapidly. We blow on them. We feed them paper. But, still they only linger so long.

The first trimester of school is almost over (University of Oregon has three terms a year). It has not been an easy trimester. I think that it has been filled with grief. I have been grieving for North Carolina, for sunshine and endless days, for a home that really is home and not this yellow half of a house, for art and creative people, for friends, family, journaling, kids I’ve known since they were born, and the feeling that anything could happen today, tomorrow, and the next day.

Here everything is predictable. Each day is fairly planned out. I know what books I will read, what papers I will work on, what stress will be lingering. Today, for example, I’m taking a moment to write this, then there will be statistics homework, then I will look at a dataset, then I will continue stats homework, then I will finish some reading and write some questions, then I will be done, take a bath, kiss Eli, and feel that I have worked another day. Only after about 9PM can I have a glass of wine and wonder, “now what?” Then maybe I will bring out a journal and write and literally explode with delight. Maybe I will listen to This American Life and try to crawl inside of my computer screen and curl up with Ira Glass and all of the people there that are always available to be listened to.

I am trying to think of this year like a pregnancy. Three trimesters. The first one has been filled with some nausea, some discomfort, an overwhelming feeling of, “What have I done?” and “How in the world is this going to work?” I’m hoping the second semester will be filled with more acceptance, more relaxation, more time devoted to the things that I love. Then in the third trimester, I’ll finish up this year of coursework, and it will end with a big finale. It will be almost as exciting as birth. It will be the end of Amanda having to take math classes in graduate school. There will be a party, announcements sent out, lots of self-fulfillment. And then the summer will be beautiful. There is no doubt of that.

There are moments here when I love life. I have an incredible advisor. I’m volunteering at a place that fulfills me. I have Eli to love and be loved by. Sometimes the sun breaks through the clouds and I’m riding my 1970s piece-of-crap bicycle, and I feel not just happy, but content. Suddenly I think that this is all part of a larger plan that really will put me where I’m meant to be, it just requires some side effects along the way. Sometimes, though I don’t feel that way at all. Sometimes the big picture is too far away (years and years away) to be seen anymore. Then, again, I try to think of this year like a pregnancy, knowing that the second trimester is always easier.

Some small Eugene moments that bring me happiness.

Eli with a leaf on his head.

Emily and Eli pretending to be robots in some shirts we silk screen printed.

Our lease for our apartment in NC ended 3 days after the wedding. I had envisioned us completely packing up the house before the wedding and being ready to set off on a romantic honeymoon right after leaving the goat farm. This did not happen. We did not hardly begin to pack up until Monday and had to be out on Wednesday. Fortunately we had lots of help from Eli’s parents and sister. We also had the entertainment of a left over and still partly full canister of helium.

We finally drove off on Wednesday afternoon after I said an almost tearful goodbye to the couch that we first kissed on (I actually told the woman who picked it up our story and made her take a photo of the two of us kissing for the last time on this couch… Eli was not happy about this.) The Uhaul was heavy and my car sagged a bit with the load. Our gas mileage quickly fell to about 16 mpg and Eli started getting stressed out about whether we were going to make it over the Rockies (we did). It wasn’t the easy post-wedding get-away that I had hoped for.

About halfway through the trip we decided that this was only the first honeymoon… there will be another that doesn’t require camping or hauling everything we own along with us. We ended up getting to a Salt Lake City campground at 9:55, 5 minutes before it was supposed to close. Apparently they closed the camp for the weekend. Then we went to an RV campground, but they weren’t open. Then we gave up and went to Walmart. The first Walmart was under construction and too creepy, so we went to another and joined a small group of car and RV campers. After spending the night sleeping upright in a Walmart parking, we decided that there will certainly be another honeymoon.

But other near catastrophes aside, it was lovely. The United States is beautiful. There was Appalachia, and the Great Plains, and then the Rockies, and the Great Salt Lake, and then suddenly Oregon, which is just about as beautiful as anywhere, really. It’s beautiful like Scotland was beautiful. The landscape feels tragic and then suddenly hopeful. The forests are green and wet with black soil and mossy goop sticking to anything that’s alive. It’s rainy most of the time, but when it’s not, the light is peach and lights up everything, if only for an instant.

Here are a few photos that I like of Eli during the first and expectantly less romantic honeymoon.

Eli inspecting the trailer in Appalachia

Eli and a mushroom in the woods

We camped by this lake somewhere in Missouri

Great Salt Lake and Eli

Eli and the super 8

Walking towards the lake and avoiding buffalo

It was lovely. I think that Mark Schueler’s photos show exactly how lovely it really was.

Eli and Tom

Isaac the littlest ring bearer

Amanda and Stu walking down the aisle

Getting Married

Avoiding Seeds

First Dance

During Tom's Speach about Eli's Childhood Imaginary Wife

Cutting Cake

Eli, Amanda, Goat.

Bridal Party

Families and Party

Eli and Amanda in a Goat Barn

Amanda and Eli

This summer has been filled with road trips and small adventures. It has been a summer where I have been really living life. I’ve been thinking about marriage and circles and life histories and the story-telling arch, and I am not ready for this summer to ever end.

Recently I went back to Chelsea, MA to find the girls that I got to know there (a small arch). I stayed with Damaris. Andrea is 2 now and I can count how long I’ve been away by how much she has grown. She can talk and run and be just a little bit bossy. I have been away for far too long.

I don’t have the energy right now to tell you all that I feel for this family. What I can tell you is that before I decided to go to Oregon, I called Damaris to ask her advice. It was the last thing I did before accepting a graduate program. I can tell you that I think we all need people in our lives who truly believe in us, and Damaris and I completely believe in each other. There are things that she is learning from me and there is so much that I am learning from her. She lives her life day to day enjoying the small moments. She never is afraid of the future or bogged down in the past. I battle with life and can become almost paralyzed with existential concerns. She finds out that she’s pregnant as a teenager and sees a beautiful family in her future.

Andrea in the grocery store in Chelsea.

Andrea's cousin doing her hair.

Andrea with her cousin's iguana.

Me and Andrea.

Andrea eating breakfast.

Andrea and Andres waiting for the bus.

Andrea with her family at the Boston Commons.

Andrea on a carousel.

Andrea feeding ducks.

Andrea and Andres on the bus home.

I’m at home in DC for the day screen printing napkins for the wedding. It is taking forever, but they will be beautiful. And in thinking about the wedding and in being away from Eli, I remembered a short story that I heard when traveling to Pittsburgh for an interview the day before Valentines day. It is a perfect short story that should be shared widely.

Eli isn’t here, and I can listen to stories over and over again without him complaining. I don’t really feel stories until the 4th or 5th time and by then, just when I’m excited about the design and smoothness of a story, Eli starts feeling like I am truly trying to torture him. So this morning I will listen to this story, and when I am done, I will listen to this youtube video and then I will do the same again and again. I will think of all that there is to create and of the beauty of love flying far away into the universe to be decoded maybe, perhaps… one day. I will decide again (as I do always after the 5th time I hear a perfect story) that I must do something with my life that lets me feel this arch of emotions. And I will decide again (as I always do) that in my life I need to find a way to make others share in this feeling.

Having worked with adolescent parents, I am very interested in why mothers choose to have children at specific ages. Now that I’m getting ready to start my PhD, I am increasingly surrounded by women who have delayed motherhood into their 30s and even 40s.

It reminds me of back when I was working at Roca with teen parents, and I realized one day that some of the girls had deduced that I must be infertile. I was in my late twenties, living with a man, and had no child. It seemed the obvious conclusion.

As the economic gap in America widens, so has the reproductive gap. In a way it is just as bizarre for women to be pushing parenthood into their 30s and even 40s as it is for women in America to decide to become adolescent parents. As teen pregnancy rates increase, so does in-vitro fertilization. This summer I am hoping to interview women on the other side of the economic/education/reproductive divide.

Rebecca, age 31, and Noah, 10 weeks

Rebecca Stein-Kunder has just finished her MD/PhD at Duke. She is about to begin her residency at Stanford with her husband, Chris.

Amanda: Why did you plan to have a baby at this point in your life?

Rebecca: I knew that I was going to have about four or five months off after medical school, and I thought that probably never again in my life would I have so much time off. The other thing is that my mother had said that she would take at least a year off to take care of Noah. I checked with her to make sure that she basically signed on the dotted line before I got pregnant.

Amanda: How did your colleagues in medical school react when you told them?

Rebecca: Everyone was really happy, but I think that everyone was worried. They asked, “Are you sure that this is a good time?” I understood their concerns, and I assured them that I had a childcare plan.”

Amanda: How has it been so far with Noah?

Rebecca: Just seeing him is incredible. It is something that is just so bizarre and tender to think that this is your child. There are easy days and joyful times and there are hard days and rough times as well. I enjoy him more and more each day as he interacts more with the world and with me. When he was about six weeks old he started smiling, and that didn’t happen a day too soon. I think we’re figuring each other out.

Amanda: Is it similar to what you expected?

Rebecca: I didn’t have very clear expectations. I knew it would be difficult. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping very much. I think I didn’t expect how much fun it would be to just play with him, even when he’s so little. As my sister-in-law says, he’s in his pot roast stage. But he can be fun to play with, and I appreciate that.

Amanda: How do you feel about the upcoming move?

Rebecca: It is comforting to have some things that will be the same. Chris and I and Noah and the dog and the two cats are all moving there together. Even though it is hard to relocate that group of people and animals three thousand miles away, it’s comforting that we’ll all be together out there too.

Amanda: How do you feel, knowing that in residency you will have much less time with Noah.

Rebecca: It’s hard for me to say, because I haven’t spent that much time away from him yet. But, when I do spend time away from him, I’m very excited when I come back and see him again. I think that at the end of the day I will be pretty happy to see him. Although, sometimes he is pretty fussy in the evenings, so I think it will be unfortunate if I spend all day looking forward to seeing him, and he’s a fussy baby.

Amanda: Do you ever have pains of regret that because of your career choice, you can’t spend more time with him?

Rebecca: Well, he’s ten weeks old now, and knowing that if I had been in residency, I would have only had six weeks at home, that makes me definitely not want to have a kid during residency. It has been important for me to have this time. I don’t know how long optimally I would stay home with him. I think that at some point, I would go back to work, even if I didn’t have to. But, I think it will be difficult as he gets older and I’m missing out on things because I’m at work.

Amanda: How has having Noah changed your relationship with Chris?

Rebecca: I thought that having Noah would be much more stressful on our relationship, but the most stressful thing on our relationship right now is the move across the country.  Noah is something that we definitely enjoy together. I enjoy watching Chris with Noah. It has been good for us in that way.

Painting of Darius Poteat

I started this painting of Darius a month after he was gone. I painted it mainly for Eli, but also because I thought that staring at his face while placing paint on a canvas might be healing. It also just seemed like Darius deserved a portrait, and he deserved to be surrounded by blue skies, leaves, and those weird orange spikey flowers that bloom in July and August in North Carolina.

Sometimes, while painting, I would think about how strange it is that this is as old as Darius will ever be. When I paint Eli or me, I imagine being old, looking back on the painting, and exclaiming to Eli, “look how young we were.” But with Darius, this is how old he will be forever. The painting is the same as the memory.

We have known this for a while, but I have not wanted to write about it here. It only feels real now, over a month since we made the decision. Back in December I circled April 15th on my calendar and wrote in big letters “YOU NOW KNOW YOUR FUTURE.” I looked forward to that day, knowing it was the deadline for deciding on a graduate program and believing that making that decision would bring peace. Instead on that day, I knew I was going to Oregon, I had just made the decision, but I didn’t really believe it. I wasn’t willing to write it down here or in any journal. It was a decision left to sink in.

Deciding which grad school offer to accept was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made. It was not just deciding on a place to live, but a person to become, an education to pursue. If I had gone to Michigan, I would have been an anthropologist. If I had gone to UNC, I would have been a social work researcher. Now I am going to be a clinical psychologist designing and evaluating interventions for foster care youth, and hopefully incorporating anthropology and social work into my PhD. Is that right for me? I hope so.

I remember early on thinking that this decision was like watching the Kentucky Derby. There were five schools in the running. Each one had its moment in the spotlight. I left Eli little notes on the table in the morning letting him know how the schools compared at that very moment. I was so conflicted that it was just too difficult to have the grad school conversation every day. In the end, it was Oregon that came galloping in from the back. It pushed through the others and took the lead. I’ve watched the Kentucky derby where Mind that Bird wins over and over. That’s Oregon. Where did that come from? Oregon was the school I applied to on a whim because I just couldn’t help but like the PI, Phil Fisher. And in the last moments, in a short half hour conversation with him in a coffee shop, I was sold.

So, we are moving to Oregon. School starts September 16th. We need to figure out where to live out there, move our stuff west, make new friends, and find peace living on the other side of this continent.

Before we go, we’re getting married. This is where we met, 3.5 years ago. This is where I always thought I would buy my first house and go to graduate school. I wanted to stay near my sister and convince my parents to retire in sunny North Carolina. That is all gone, for now. But one more life event will take place here. On August 21st, on a goat farm, in the oppressive Carolina heat, Eli and I will commit to each other for life.

A couple of days after that, we will get in my car (Eli’s will be sold by then) and drive across the country to a city that I have seen once for three days. I will take statistics, psychopathology, clinical ethics and methodology my first semester. If it’s the right program for me, then 6 years down the line I will have my PhD and be a seasoned Oregonian.

It has been a couple of crazy weeks, but I’m into graduate schools and now I just need to decide what I am going to study and where I am going to spend the next 5-8 years of my life. I have 5 weeks left to make this decision. All day every day I ask myself if I am meant to be a clinical psychologist, social work researcher, or anthropologist. I have options, lots of options, more options than my brain can handle thinking about. Indecisiveness and a broad range of interests has brought me to this point.

These past three weeks I have been to Pittsburgh, DC, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and North Carolina. I am about to head up to DC, then to Philadelphia, then to Michigan, then back to DC, then North Carolina, then on to Oregon. It is a busy life that I will be glad to give up once the decision is made.

Applying and deciding has been an emotional journey. I have enjoyed lots of small moments amid interview preparation and performance. I have talked to many brilliant researchers who have listened to me. I have looked at myself in the mirror suited up and spiffy and hardly recognized myself. I’ve listened to myself speak on interviews and been surprised by how eager I am to move forward into graduate school. I’ve gotten so excited over graduate school that I can’t sleep and so nervous that I can’t get out of bed in the morning. I have this lingering feeling that maybe they made a mistake admitting me. They read the essay wrong, didn’t realize how little I really know.

But in the midst of all of this, I feel incredibly grounded. Going to college I was alone. Now there are two of us making this decision, and we will start another home together. Eli will help with the dinners when I’m too tired. He’ll be there to be more important than anything and everything else. Amid the stress of decision-making I have gone with my mom to see my grandmother’s cousin to hear all of her stories of life during the depression. I have spent hours driving Eli nuts with all of my indecisiveness. I have caught up with my mom’s childhood friend and heard that, “Oh, everyone in school knew of Stu Van Scoyoc.” And I have floated around a butterfly house with Erin, Annabel, Hanna, and Isaac. I can’t complain.

Gearing up for my final clinical psychology interview.

My mom interviewing Mary Etna (my grandmother's cousin who is 96 and lovely.)

Mary Etna after I opened the window blinds.

My mom and her childhood friend, Michelle.

Hanna, Erin, Annabel, and a beautiful butterfly at the Museum of Life and Science.

Annabel and some mating butterflies. (Rusty, this one is for you.)