Amanda van Scoyoc

I painted this the day before I began grad school last year. That was almost exactly a year ago. In a way, I am studying exactly what I paint. Right now, this very moment, I am finishing a masters presentation about how children’s early experiences of maltreatment effect their attachment behavior. This semester I am going to work on a qualitative research project understanding how women’s prenatal experiences influence whether or not they use substances throughout their pregnancies. In a way that is what the painting is about as well. If only you could just keep everything bad out, and pick a child ripe off of tree growing from the ground.

That is strange isn’t it? The metaphors your mind makes without you knowing it.

When I was a small child, I truly believed that all we needed was one great generation. If we could all just work together, figure our lives out, have children, and raise them the right way, it would begin a cascade from one generation to the next. The kindness would permeate and there would be no more evil. It was so simple and is still easy to remember and explain in childish terms. I wondered why we hadn’t just done it already. If a seven year old could figure it out, why hadn’t the adults?

This summer we took some time off. We really took time off. We drove across the country, trusty dog in tow, until we got to Michigan. Then, after a couple of weeks of lazying about the great lakes and visiting with Eli’s family, we headed down to Nicaragua and Costa Rica for a few weeks. We learned some Spanish, lived with a Nicaraguan host family, contracted water-borne diseases, took all of our Cipro, volunteered at an orphanage, and explored lake Nicaragua. I then circled back through Virginia to see my new baby niece and visit with family.

I expect that I will put up quite a few posts from summer. But, this one is about a little girl named Ingred. She is five years old and living in the orphanage where we volunteered. She is the youngest there, and she knows it. She is constantly carried by the older girls and is never picked on. She is sweet and cuddly, and has only been there for a few short months. She is introduced as “Ingred, the youngest here.”

The home where she lives is run by nuns. The girls are taken from their homes due to maltreatment or sometimes they are dropped off because of extreme poverty. The 20 or so of them live together bunk-bed dorm-room style. They eat beans and rice and most of the older ones seem to lazy about a lot of the day. Life seems pretty boring there, when you are 14, 15, 16… but not for Ingred. She is five and nothing in life is boring yet.

Eli took the last two here. I want the bottom picture to be printed out and then put above my desk at work. I want to remember Ingred running, running, running, while the older kids are still asleep or just lazying about in their dorm-room beds. When I am there analyzing data and trying to figure out how we can help kids that are growing up in crummy situations, I want to look up and see her run, arms flung out, with nothing stopping her.

A small painting of Annabel and Simran (my newest niece who was still in fetus form at the time.) I hadn’t oil painted all school year, and damn it felt good to pull out those paints, set aside a day, and see what emerged.

One of my favorite movies is Great Expectations because the main character stops drawing for years, and then suddenly everything is back, the desire to draw flooding him and taking over. It also helps that all of the drawings in the movie are actually made by Francisco Clemente and are legitimately awesome and beautiful. Like getting on a bike for the first time in years, it is nice to know that the muscle memory is still there just waiting for a brush in hand.

Cerulean Pumpkin Van Zoeren has been a part of our daily lives for a little over six months now. She was our first foster dog and we completely failed to ever give her back, shirking our duties. She spent the first four months of her life in a meth van in Oregon with a couple of people and quite a few of her dog relatives. We have been told that she was meth addicted from licking the powder off of her paws and initially was quite aggressive. This could be true, or it could be an Oregon tall tale. We’ll never know. She was never nervous with us. The only remnant of her past seems to be a profound lack of trust for scruffy looking men, which is actually quite useful at times. We tend to mostly not trust the same guys who come knocking at the door. However, she does not trust the postman. This I do not understand. He is nice guy, is not scruffy and is a constant visitor. I cannot reason with Cerie about certain things.

Her name was Pumpkin, which needed to go. Eli and I settled on Cerulean, and we call her Cerie. I had always thought that Cerulean would be a great kid’s name. It is the name of the color of the sky, and as a painter, cerulean is my favorite pigment. Cerulean hue, the cheap mixed form of the pigment, is made from cyan and white. It is an overpowering chalky mixture that blends terribly. Until late in college, I didn’t understand the differences in hues and pigments. I always had fairly cheap oil paints. Then a painting professor of mine made me go out and get the real stuff, the cadmium red and yellow, the lead white, the alizarin crimson, and yes, the real cerulean. I remember that first nude portrait with new paints learning just what cerulean can do. See, it blends away into skin’s shadows. It is a clean light blue with no white, an unsaturated pigment that allows shadows to mellow to blues or purples the way that they really do. It is a secret color that is infused in my paintings, but you would never know because you won’t see the blue, just the darkening, the coolness, the depth.

I imagined one day having a child that would be like the color cerulean. It would be able to blend into different places and situations, softly, silently, making them more beautiful, making them just right. This was the meaning behind the name. Eli rejected it and to be absolutely certain that I wouldn’t continue to fight for our first born son to be “Cerulean,” he suggested that Pumpkin become Cerie, and now she is.

Cerie is not subtle. She bounds into rooms and overtakes them. She hurdles her body about and overwhelms people. The name in no way suits her, but it is hers.

We didn’t think that we were ready for a dog, but then there she was, this unmistakable part of our lives that we couldn’t possibly return to the shelter. With last year being quite a difficult academic year for me, we were trying to focus on creating a life for ourselves. We were lonely in this new place. I felt lost without the artistic community that I had in Durham, in Boston, and Philadelphia. At times I felt like I was heading down an endless path towards a life of a statistician, when all I really wanted was to go back to doing things that I cared so much more deeply about. And then suddenly on another rainy cold Oregon day (which is all days for 9 months), Cerie was there trying to convince me that this morning was going to be the best morning yet. She was there so happy to have us, and perhaps last year, that was exactly what we needed.

I still find it strange to think that she has never been to the east coast. She was born out west and this is her home. I still feel transient here, but she is completely at ease, and in her element. I see how comfortable she is with us and I realize that somehow Eli and I have made this yellow half-of-a-house her delightful home. She has nothing to fear here except for the occasional scruffy-looking man, or the nice-looking postman. Besides that, life here with us is pretty great. Watching the ease at which she lives her life with us, little by little she is convincing me that things here might just be alright as well. Maybe that is the little bit of Cerulean hidden inside of her.

Andrea as a beautiful flower girl

Today Andrea turns 3. Three years ago I was in Boston in a hospital room with my cumbersome Hasselblad taking photos of her mom in labor.

So much has happened since that day in the hospital. I would never have anticipated this life that I have now, but yet in a way it all stems from that year. Who I am now, in some way emerged that day, in that room, with that family. That day I was there as a photographer, researcher, and student, but I became a vulnerable observer. I remember holding back her leg as she pushed and crying seeing the pain that she was in. It was impossible not take part, and that changed the relationship that I now have with photography and the relationship that I want to have with research. Not to over exaggerate, but it changed my relationship with life. I am still searching for those moments that stick. I want to be pulled by relationships and vulnerability. I want it all to be a part of this circular experience of life. I want everything to fold back together in the end. I want to demand this of life.

Doesn’t it seem right that clinical psychologists should be vulnerable? Anthropologists so frequently are. It is a tenant of how they work with people. If you are asking someone to let you in, shouldn’t you give enough of yourself to be vulnerable? As a psychologist we work in such tenuous situations. Should we be vulnerable? What is this professional relationship. Sometimes I think that maybe I just wasn’t meant to be a professional.

The professors that inspire me are the ones here whose vulnerability has slipped in to their lectures and stories. It happens infrequently here, but when it happens, I hold on. I wonder how many people here are driven by some deeper experience. For me, I can tell you about those small moments that replay in my mind like scenes in a movie to motivate me and remind me why I am here. I sometimes wonder if this is what has made this year so difficult for me. I read articles and run stats and all of this is a method of learning devoid of those moments. The moments are insignificant here in comparison to the bigger picture of trends and analyses.

I’ve read extensively on teen parenting, but I am still motivated more by that moment in that hospital room three years ago than the fact that the United States has a teen parenting rate nine times that of western Europe.

Both of these things are important, the stats and the vulnerability. Now I only need to figure out how to hold on tight to stories when the waves of ANOVAs and linear regression wash over me.

For now, with all of that in front of me, on Andrea’s third birthday, I’m enjoying just thinking about Andrea. She has been a part of me since the moment she came to exist.

This year, she was the little flower girl at our wedding who gingerly handed flowers to each person as she meandered down the aisle. I feel so fortunate that I’ve not only gotten to be there for some of the big moments in Andrea’s life but she has been there for some of the more glorious moments in my life as well.

Nothing too insightful to write today. This second trimester of grad school has been relatively uneventful so far and I’m finally nearing the half way point. Interview day for our clinical psychology program was yesterday, and seeing all of the incredible young people who would love to come to University of Oregon made me feel appreciative of where I am. Coming to Oregon is beginning to feel more and more like the fated right decision.

There has been sun in Oregon recently. It’s going to be 50 degrees and sunny all week. I’m not sure that I quite understand the weather. It is just so damn fickle. I’m confused and the plants are confused, but we’re all still enjoying the sun.

Here are a few of my favorite recent pictures… a few of my favorite small moments.

Annabel hiding

Annabel in Durham, NC over Christmas

Erin and Annabel at the carousel

Eli eating thanksgiving dinner in Oregon

Something that the ocean coughed up onto the sand

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.