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I missed posting anything on Substack last week because my husband and I made a trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit friends and to hold a book event for my latest book, Subject to Change: Teaching and Learning from Teen Moms. I spent the days prior to the trip obsessing over what to bring and which passages to read from the book. Because I planned to conduct a simple science lab at the event, I had to prepare and pack all those supplies. This gave me little time to think about Substack.

We arrived in Tulsa two days before the event and had a full day to reconnect with the city and with friends. Tulsa and Broken Arrow, its largest suburb, had been our home for 30 years before we moved to Texas in 2019. Our son and daughter graduated from high school and moved on in the 90s to their own homes and lives in Austin and Los Angeles. We knew they would never come “home,” as in our home. When we retired, we chose to move to the Austin area (because really, who can afford LA?) to be closer to family in Texas and Louisiana.

Because Subject to Change describes my career change journey from a medical laboratory technologist to a Broken Arrow high school science teacher at the age of 55 and the changes that experience brought to my life, it seemed appropriate to organize a book event there. We planned to take advantage of that event to visit with good friends.

My husband and I spent most of our free day driving around Tulsa and Broken Arrow to see what had changed and what hadn’t. We had a nice lunch on Cherry Street and spent some time at the wonderful Gathering Place park along the Arkansas River. We drove by our old home and visited briefly with a former neighbor around the corner. We took photos and noted how much bigger the trees had grown. We also spent a lot of time arguing about where something was and remembering (differently!) the last time we’d been there.

Thomas Wolfe once insisted You Can’t Go Home Again, in his posthumously published novel. A good friend reminded me of this saying on Saturday evening, when I expressed my disappointment in the turnout at the book event. Several people I hoped to see were either out of town or sent last-minute regrets. On the other hand, a few people were there that I wasn’t expecting. On a positive note, I was delighted to visit with a former colleague who’d been my “next-door” teacher all those years ago. We’ve moved on to other classrooms (Ashley) or retirement (me) but the bond we share after devoting a significant period of our work lives to the well-being of teen moms is unshakable.

There’s a lot I miss about Tulsa, like the ease of navigating in comparatively thin traffic, cooler weather, and more accessible cultural amenities than those in Austin. The weather was lovely while we were there, but visiting was bittersweet. We have strong relationships there with those who lived nearby, those we worked with or went to church with and it was good to reconnect with those we could. Many of those people are a part of what makes me who I am.

Our dear friends are still dear to us. But the city has moved on without us. At the same time, we’ve developed roots and new friends in our Texas home and enjoy the proximity to family. Is it home yet? I’m not sure. Tulsa still seems like home in many ways, but I think that’s because it’s the source of so many good and/or life-changing memories and so many people I care about.

They say “home is where the heart is,” and I know it’s not a geographical location. Home is with the people I love, either here in Texas or back in Oklahoma … even the friends I’ve never seen in person. They all are a part of my home—and my heart.