I have fallen in love at first sight only one time in my thirty-one years. I was eighteen, and I was traveling with my mom during the spring break of my senior year of high school. Back in my Illinois hometown, the tulips were just sprouting but the grass was still dead and the snow newly melted. Mom and I flew down to New Orleans because I was seriously considering going to college at Tulane University. The school had offered me a merit scholarship that made it nearly as affordable as in-state tuition at the University of Illinois, so my parents had acquiesced that, yes, Tulane was a possibility. I had already poured over pictures of New Orleans and of the campus, and I was sure that I would love it.

The city was more beautiful than any of the pictures. You cannot capture the spirit and beauty of New Orleans in any picture, or with any words, although we can try. You have to be there to feel the living pulse of this city. The first day, Mom and I took the streetcar from our downtown hotel uptown to Tulane's campus. Flowers bloomed riotously, and huge live oaks hugged the streetcar as we clanged by. It was April, and already the city seemed alive, thriving. After I had spent a full calendar year there, I knew: the city never died like the cities of my childhood had every winter.

And the architecture! Perhaps there is some other city in the world with a more myriad collection of architecture than New Orleans, but I've yet to find it. As a kid I had poured over home plan books and architecture books; New Orleans was all that come to life and more. Along St. Charles Avenue I spied dozens of Victorian mansions, a collection of Georgian-style abodes, a few Art Deco buildings, and the famous Wedding Cake house.  (Later, I would spend afternoons walking and driving New Orleans many neighborhoods, soaking in all the fabulous residential architecture.)

We got off the streetcar in front of Gibson Hall at Tulane University. Since we were coming from downtown, we'd first been astounded by Loyola's beautiful Gothic-style campus, and then right next to it, the imposing and intricate gray Richardson Romanesque facades of Tulane's front buildings. Across St. Charles Avenue was Audubon Park, beds of flowers shaded with more live oak trees.

Mom and I were both impressed by how friendly and real our Tulane hosts seemed. At this point, I'd been on a number of campus tours, but I felt more welcomed and comfortable at Tulane than any of the other places. Other students were constantly coming up to our tour guide to say hello, and a few struck up conversations with me, too. Tulane has a greater percentage of students from more than 500 miles away than any other university in the US; there is a mindset of openness and friendliness. People can't stay sequestered in their high school cliques like they can at a state university, because those high school cliques aren't here. We were on the Newcomb College (at that time, Tulane's coordinate college for women) campus, chatting with a student who was also from Illinois, when I spied the palm trees.

Palm trees. That winter of '96-97, my midwestern hometown went something like 35 days with no sunshine. Here in New Orleans were a line of green palm trees. I was sold.

My college years in New Orleans are a blur of textbooks, 15-page papers, dark bars, and Mardi Gras parades. For three years, I was a member of a Mardi Gras krewe, which meant I was invited to a number of parties throughout the years and two formal balls each year. Of course, I rode on a float during the krewe's parade. Every year I scrimped and saved to buy Mardi Gras throws (beads, doubloons, etc) for the parade. This is the spirit of New Orleans: most people don't have much, but they will happily use what they do have to bring joy to others.

Like most Tulane students, who work hard and party hard, I did graduate in four years (with several majors, but to list them would make my identity easy to figure out), but I couldn't leave the city yet. There was nowhere else I'd rather be. New Orleans has heart and soul, and if you live there, it gets into your soul. I liked the area where I grew up, but New Orleans inspired a passion in me that nowhere else ever has. The history, the architecture, the food, the people—it's a cliché, but it's also true: New Orleans is the most unique of American cities. It's also the most welcoming. If you love New Orleans, the people will love you back. New Orleanians love life, and they love their city in a way that few other city's residents can understand.

New Orleans is haunted. It has a lifeblood and a pulse of its own. I have lived in cities that have soul (Savannah, Chicago, Bangkok) and cities that do not. New Orleans is haunted because it has so much history, because it's meant something to so many people, because so many people love it with a visceral and instinctive love. Places that are haunted are haunted because they mean something to many people.  That collective feeling hangs around the city like a fog, a ghost.

-------

In 2003, I had a job offer in Asia, so I took it, leaving New Orleans. I had always wanted to live abroad, and this opportunity was too good to turn down. I loved the Asian city and lived there for several years. I didn't realize how much I talked about NOLA until I was out with some coworkers one night, welcoming a new coworker to town.

The new coworker asked about New Orleans so I started describing it. When I took a breath, I noticed the new coworker staring at me.

“She's really in love with New Orleans,” another coworker offered. At that point, we'd worked together abroad for a couple of years and were like family. “I don't know how else to describe it. But she really loves New Orleans.”

A few months later, Katrina happened. At first, it seemed that New Orleans had been spared, and I celebrated in a Bangkok bar with friends. Then the levees broke. I had insomnia for days, and watched CNN-International and BBC International when I wasn't at work. It's corny, but my heart was breaking. I was filled with an impotent anger. The Superdome where I'd once cheered for the Green Wave was seemingly destroyed. I remembered meeting the kindly architect of the Dome, Arthur Q. Davis, when he came to talk to one of my architecture classes; I remembered his pride in his design. My coterie of international friends watched the news reports with horror.

“Five days, why does it take so long for your government to get help to those people?” One of my Thai friends asked.

“How can this happen in America?” asked my best friend, who was French and felt a kinship with me because of my love of New Orleans, where I had learned to speak some French with a reasonably good accent.

I had no answers, just a deep shame and sadness. I thought I had lost my love.

-----

At the end of 2005, I moved back to my hometown because I had fallen in love with someone I'd known since we were children. In retrospect, I can see I was looking for some stability after watching what I thought was the death of my adopted city. The romance did not last long, and 2006 was the worst year of my life, just as it was the worst year for many people who lived on the Gulf Coast. I had pretty much every sort of problem one can have: medical, financial/career, romantic, familial. For the first time in my life, I had some gigantic problems over which I had little or no control; I had worked hard and tried to do the right things and had failed. I felt like some unknown Katrina-like force had somehow devastated my life as well.

At the beginning of 2007, I moved back down south, and a while after that, I moved to Savannah, partly because it reminded me so much of a smaller, calmer New Orleans. Since I was back in the south, I met up with some fellow Tulane alums and we reminisced about our times in the Big Easy. I heard from several who had been back to New Orleans that it wasn't time to visit yet; the city was still a mess, a nightmare, and seeing it would break my heart. Anyway, I didn't have anyone to go with, and despite having gone to places like Cambodia on my own, I knew the trip back to New Orleans was not a trip I could make by myself.

New Orleans stayed in my mind. I dropped my car insurer (as did my sister) after finding out about how the company had fudged paperwork in order to avoid paying out Katrina victims the money that they were owed. I was dating a lawyer in Savannah, and we got into a discussion about Katrina. He had some choice words for the people who had been trapped in the Superdome: “Why didn't they just walk somewhere else?”

Of course, the lawyer had never been to New Orleans. I explained the social conditions to him: many people in New Orleans (or at least a higher percentage than in most American cities) didn't own cars and knew few people who did. Some of them were poor by choice (artists, etc), some were the indigent poor with whom I'd volunteered as a college student. New Orleans is not unique in its endemic urban poverty, but Katrina had shined a light on the disturbing situation.

I explained the geography to him: New Orleans is essentially an island; the only way to reach the city is from miles-long bridges. August and September in New Orleans are still months of sweltering tropical sunshine and humidity, interspersed with terrific storms. One would need a good number of supplies as well as considerable physical endurance to walk to safety—if one could even make it because of the floods of polluted waters. Despite all this, the lawyer was determined to blame the victims. To me, this was as ridiculous as blaming the victims of tornadoes and river flooding that I'd known as a child; there are few places you can live where you are totally immune from some sort of natural disaster.

There but for the grace of God go any of us. Ironically, the lawyer's spacious house is situated on a coastal marsh outside Savannah. Should a hurricane hit here, he would lose everything. I stopped seeing him; some part of his heart was missing. (And perhaps a part of his brain, as well.)

-----

In May 2009, I met my boyfriend, who I call Odysseus on this blog. Odysseus was an Army brat, but he'd graduated from Auburn University and his parents now live in Gulf Shores, Alabama, although they'd lost a house in Hurricane Ivan. Odysseus' entire family had lived with him in his cramped apartment at Auburn for a week right after Ivan.

Before I met him, Odysseus had been to New Orleans at least a dozen times as a college student. We had even been to several of the same Mardi Gras, wandering through the same French Quarter crowds. Odysseus had last been to New Orleans in 2008, when he was on leave from his first deployment in Iraq. We both had funny New Orleans stories; he had sympathy for the residents because he understood the situation, and had heard stories from Army friends who'd been there right after the hurricane.

We decided to take our first “big” vacation together to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I had only known him for about two months, but I could already tell that he was someone I could share my city with, because he understood what it means to miss New Orleans. We spent his 26^th birthday at Galatoire's in the French Quarter, where old men in seersucker suits and old ladies in loudly colored dresses sang him “Happy Birthday!” Now, I was just another tourist in the Quarter. But my heart was back home.

The next day, we had brunch at Commander's Palace and, fortified by good food and a little liquor, I took my first drive around the city since I'd left in 2003, my first drive around since Katrina. Magazine Street was spiffier than I remembered it, peeling buildings painted and broken shutters fixed. Audubon looked healed; Tulane's campus was better than before. (We came back the next day, a Monday, and I was astounded by the wonderful new student center, among other new buildings.) All of the houses I'd lived in were still standing. The one on Calhoun Street was a brighter shade of yellow, another on Nashville Avenue had a huge Saints flag hanging in the picture window.

All of the places that meant the most to me were still there. All of my fears of losing my city were assuaged. NOLA had survived an apocalyptic disaster. In fact, it even seemed better than I remembered it.

I am lucky in that; we also drove around Mid City, Lakeview and Gentilly and I could see the horrible scars in what had been charming neighborhoods. I feel for those residents, many who are from families that have lived in New Orleans for generations. I thought about the way that New Orleans had gotten into my soul—and that of my family, who all visited New Orleans numerous time and love it—in less than 15 years. That love, that spirit, multiplied through the generations—that's why people came back to rebuilt New Orleans.

That's why New Orleanians love the Saints. The Saints are not an easy team to love. In fact, I was never much of a Saints fan until after Katrina, when I began to understand that they were a symbol of New Orleans.  I have a life-long inherited love of the Chicago Bears, so my loyalty is split; but I'd like to think I can root for both teams.  Other than 2007, they've rarely both had winning seasons in the same year, anyway. 

Unlike da Bearsss, the Saints are not a vaunted NFL team with a long-storied history or lots of Super Bowl wins. It's not really cool to love the Saints, or it wasn't until this year. They don't make it easy, and neither does New Orleans, despite its nickname. The endemic poverty and racism of the city shocked me when I first moved there. People in New Orleans move slow as molasses, the tropical summer showers can drown you every day. New Orleans will never be the most productive or organized place in America, and the Saints will never be the Patriots. If you want order and predictability, there are a hundred cities and several football teams in America which can give that to you. But if you want heart and soul and, yes, a unique jazziness, well, New Orleans is your city and the Saints are your team.

It's been less than five years since we thought New Orleans was lost. Some predicted its demise; some seemed determined to kill it with neglect. New Orleans never will be the same, but in many ways, it's better than it was before the storm. Even if the Saints don't win today, just getting to the big game is symbolic of New Orleans' ability to rally as a community, fight back and triumph. Some football games are just sporting events, but this one is symbolic of something bigger, because the Saints organization and the people of New Orleans have made it that way.

Like the rehabilitation of New Orleans, my own life has been looking up since that disastrous hurricane. I finished my master's degree and I have a job that I love, and I live in a city that I love for the same reasons that I love New Orleans. Most importantly of all, I love someone who knows what it means to love New Orleans. If you don't know why that's so important, it's okay. You just don't know what it means to miss New Orleans.

---

Odysseus is pondering getting out of the Army when his time is up. Last week on one of our Skype dates (he's currently deployed in Iraq), he read off a list of possible post-Army careers for us to discuss. Second only to “be a drummer in a band” was “be a cop in New Orleans or Miami or some other big city.” Odysseus knows I don't like most cops but have nothing but the utmost respect for the New Orleans Police Department. In the six years I lived there, all of my run-ins with the NOPD were pleasant, and unlike many other police forces, they are actually out fighting crime and helping people, as opposed to harassing individuals and writing dubious tickets. Some journalists portrayed the NOPD in a negative light after Katrina, and I've no doubt that some situations were handled poorly. Considering the epic damage, and the fact that they were not supported by other law enforcement as they should have been, I view the NOPD as heroes. I half-jokingly told Odysseus he was only allowed to be a cop if we moved to New Orleans.

I do not know if we will end up making New Orleans our home, but I would not be surprised. We have both traveled widely, and we know there's nowhere else like NOLA.