Old House, New House

In July 2018, we helped Matthew move into his first house, a 1930 bungalow in Durham, North Carolina. He accepted the offer from UNC this spring, including a Royster Fellowship, to start the PhD program in Clinical Psychology in August. Now he was starting a new program in a new house. These months leading up to Matthew's decision on a graduate program gave us much to think about:  the undergraduate work at Duke and the stint with Teach for America, the year of psych classes at UT, the research years with Mitch at UNC. We thought of Chapel Hill's favorite son, James Taylor, whose story of addiction and recovery is well known. And overwhelmingly, we thought of Matthew's determination to help young people like his brother who struggle with depression. Stephen would have benefited from a psychologist like Matthew. 

With those thoughts and excitement for Matthew's future, Mark and I loaded up the moving van in Austin with hand-me-down furniture, headed to North Carolina and helped Matthew further settle in, and then drove with him to Pawley's Island to visit Mark's mom. I lost count of the number of times she told Matthew it was wonderful to see him. Elizabeth could not make the trip as planned, and we missed being with her on her birthday, but we made the most of our anniversary, taking Mom out to lunch and then going out for drinks that evening at our favorite place on the water.