Love Letter, by Casey Lefante
If you have ever loved something so much that you ache when it is gone, then you know.
Three months ago, I visited one of those friends who appears out of nowhere, the sort who you feel you’ve known forever even though you only met a few years ago, back when you thought you knew who you were. Then this person comes along, this brand new idea, and you discover that maybe you aren’t who you thought you were. Maybe things you thought were true are not.
You know, one of those friends.
After three days of fried food and football, I flew back to New Orleans. On the plane, I played The Distillers to distract myself from sadness. Brody screamed angry words into my ears as I returned to my fragile home. Fragile—a word so often used to describe material things or our own emotional psyches. Things that need protecting, or else they might break and disappear from our lives forever, until one day they never existed. Things like feelings, or friendships, or coastlines. I missed him already.
And the air’s filled with electricity, and the sky is deeper than a dream. [1]
Approaching the Louisiana coast, even though I’d seen it a hundred times before, I was still surprised by the image. Like forgetting about a scar until one day it starts to itch. Or knowing you live in a bowl but not realizing how deep that bowl is until it fills with water on an August morning. I’ve known about the fragile state of Louisiana’s coast since fourth grade, when my class took a field trip in an effort to educate us, the new generation, about what we were inheriting. “Here is what you’re getting,” the trip meant. “Good luck with that.” We didn’t know this, of course. We just thought it was a good excuse to dress out of uniform and maybe see an alligator.
On the plane, I thought about this, about all the things that my generation has been given and what we are expected to fix. I thought about the mistakes we’ve made, the negligence, and then I thought of the mistakes that the previous generation has handed us with the expectation that we will have all the tools to do something about it.
We don’t.
As the plane lowered closer to the marshes, I imagined crash landing in the water. I wondered whether I’d be able to figure out the oxygen mask or the seat-turned-life-preserver. I realized that I stupidly felt safer crash landing here because this was my home. I’d spent years defending it to people, trying to explain my loyalty. The reasons I’d never left, the reasons I’ll always stay. I silenced Brody and switched to a playlist I created in 2006, when the Saints went to their first NFC Championship. Two days ago, my friend and I watched the former ‘Aints win their first playoff game against the Cardinals, advancing to their second shot at a Super Bowl appearance. For once, it seemed like the impossible might be as likely as the inevitable.
So set him up. Let him fall.
Turn him over in your hands.
God save the King of New Orleans. [2]
The coast will inevitably, like so many other things in life, disappear, leaving our home defenseless against nature’s harsh influence. So many of us on this sinking ship of a city fear that we will become extinct. That we will become people who used to live here, people who used to be. We are fighting for what vanishes more with every year, for what may one day only exist on paper maps and photographs. All of this, of course, is not something people like to think about. So here we are, waiting.
I miss it already.
On the plane, a song about my first love slipped through my ears. I studied the marshes, studied the blue.
It’s just ‘cause I never want to be from somewhere else. [3]
I was home, the sort of home that you know like the back of your hand and yet she still surprises you, a home that welcomes your faults because she, herself, thrives on flaws. A home who, like an old friend, teaches you who you are and then flips everything you know around, so that you discover you aren’t who you think you are. Maybe the things you thought were true are not. You are not fragile. You—like your homeland, your love—you are strong.
[1] “Dismantle Me,” The Distillers
[2] “King of New Orleans,” Better Than Ezra
[3] “The Avenue,” Cowboy Mouth
