Just ask most anyone who lives there, loving New Orleans comes easy.
On the other hand, compartmentalizing emotions, for me, doesn't. I tend to feel all the things at once. Simultaneously balancing the city's joie de vivre with overwhelming grief as Carnival starts is exhausting.
How do we do this? Hold and honor the memories of those lost in the New Year's Day massacre through this season dedicated to merrymaking? The two extremes of the emotional spectrum make for uneasy bedfellows.
While revelry is a release, the call for resilience is old hat and has already worn everyone down.
That duality is old-school New Orleans -- like dancing a second line after a funeral -- reaching toward joy through sorrow, rooted in shared humanity.
This time, though, the dissonance feels sharper.
Even still, the parades will roll. The beads will fly. The cake will be eaten. The baby will be found. The kings and queens will reign and wave -- and we will be in the streets together again.
I hope and pray that we can find ways to remember the losses, to heal and to be kind to each other in the process.
Yes, New Orleans is good at that. A day after the horrors, a friend and I were discussing New Orleans' super powers. She said something along the lines of, "It's a great host. It knows how to make people feel welcome."
I remember the exact spot and moment when I recognized my own feeling of connection to this place. It was January 2004. I had lived in the state for two years and still felt like an outsider. My husband and I were at the Ogden Museum, where each art piece's placard includes a nod to the artist's home -- by including the state's silhouette with the information.
I perk up each time I see the familiar shape of Mississippi, my home state, and on that day, I caught myself paying extra attention to those pieces. At some point walking through the museum, I saw a painting by Elemore Morgan, Jr. and looked at the placard.
Without thinking, I felt that same ping of familiarity when I saw the shape of Louisiana -- like I was connected to this place, too.
Moments later, we walked out to the museum's rooftop terrace and heard a marching band in the distance. We stood out there until a small Mardi Gras parade went by. In that moment, I got Louisiana on a different level than I had previously.
This weekend, I asked friends and strangers if they had a similar moment when they "knew."
Call me baby
Tammy Theis moved to New Orleans from Dallas in 2018 to marry a ship captain she met on a dating app.
"Our first date was Mardi Gras, which was such an extreme introduction, but the heightened feelings of joy, camaraderie, love and unrestrained self-expression where not unique to that day," she wrote. "I soon realized that was the vibe of this city. New Orleans is the most soulful, warm, joyous place I've ever been. From the first time someone called me 'baby,' I was in love with this city."
You need a friend
Eric Holden moved to New Orleans in 1979 to attend law school.
"I was looking for a summer job as a tennis pro," Holden wrote. "Oblivious to the social structure, I went to the New Orleans Country Club and naively asked the head tennis pro, Tom Whaley, to hire me. He responded, 'Man, you don't need a job, you need a friend.'"
Whaley and Holden became great friends and played tennis together for many years.
"He introduced me to the local tennis community, which continues to welcome me," Holden wrote.
Throw that hat in the sky
Laura Claverie moved to New Orleans in the 1970s to be a reporter. She loved riding the streetcar to work daily.
"It cost 17 cents each way. I felt like Mary Tyler Moore!" Claverie wrote. "One morning, I chose to drive to work and discovered that someone had stolen the battery from my yellow Chevrolet. I knew I'd arrived!"
Dogs at the bar
On Sunday, Keith Long, who grew up with me in Forest, Mississippi, wrote to tell me of his morning and how its details sum up something bigger about his love for the Big Easy. He and his wife started at Verti Marte in the French Quarter around 10 a.m. to visit a bartender friend.
"It's a 24-hour bar, and we knew most of the 15 people who were there," he wrote. "Our dog Lizzie sat in a barstool to get treats from the bartender. One of the drag queens who regularly performs there came over and hugged our necks. She had made a big pot of red beans and rice and jalapeno cornbread for everyone to eat for free when the Saints game started. There were about four other dogs at the bar. That's a pretty typical Sunday for us."
Tortoise on a leash
Stephanie November who moved to New Orleans in 2012 wrote: "The first week we moved to New Orleans we saw a man on St. Charles Avenue walking a tortoise on a leash followed by a clown on a bicycle! Costumes, glitter, dancing in the streets -- nobody gives quirkiness a second look in New Orleans. It's the chance to be a little less inhibited that makes it such a fun place to live."