by Brittany Viklund
Where is the place you call home and why? I was born in southern CA, and lived there until we moved to New Mexico when I was ten. I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2011, and then two years later moved to Oklahoma City with my (at the time) boyfriend whose job moved him.
I got engaged and married in Oklahoma City. We bought our first house here, adopted three cats and a puppy, raised five foster kittens and one foster dog. Had two babies and one miscarriage. All of our babies' "firsts" have been here. I never thought I’d be in Oklahoma more than a year, and now I honestly can’t imagine myself anywhere else, even though at this point in our lives my husband’s work no longer keeps him here (he now works on his organization’s national team and could ultimately live anywhere).
We bought our first house here, adopted three cats and a puppy, raised five foster kittens and one foster dog. Had two babies and one miscarriage. All of our babies' "firsts" have been here. I never thought I’d be in Oklahoma more than a year, and now I honestly can’t imagine myself anywhere else...Our roots are here and they are deep, despite the fact that none of our family lives anywhere close to us. We’ve started to talk about where we see ourselves, especially when the education of our boys comes into the conversation. It’s weird for us, we have no requirement to be here whatsoever, and yet we are consciously choosing to be here.
I don’t know what the future holds for us, so I collect keepsakes of the present moment, just in case our last days in Oklahoma sneak up on me before I realize it. This Mapiful print has the hospital at the lake where both of the boys were born, which was also the lake where Pat asked me to marry him. It has our wedding venue. Our favorite taco spot (Big Truck!). Our first apartment as newlyweds, and our first home. It has the downtown streets we used to ride our longboards on (pre-baby days), the little patch of land where we pick our pumpkins in the fall, and our Christmas tree in December. It captures so much, like the veins of my body, it’s the place that has given me my entire life, no matter where we end up next.
