We received this email in our feedback@antigravitymagazine.com inbox in early July, reprinted here with minimal edits.
Hi, my dear ANTIGRAVITY.
You can look like a magazine, but I know you are the door for the introvert side of every reader and mine too. And I want to tell you my story about how you helped me to get closer to the external world here and open the door towards the unknown.
But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Kateryna. I’m 42 years old Ukrainian, who traveled to New Orleans first time in November 2023 and since November 2024 reside here with my beloved Cajun husband, two kids and a cat, not far from the Oak Street.
I could write a lot about my previous life, social connections and quite a risky job—bodyguard of U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine. But since I didn’t pack it into my suitcase, I can tell you only about how the blank sheet feels. My English vocabulary is still small and I’m a clumsy writer, but I’ll try.
It feels like curiosity, anxiety and being a cut rose in the vase.
And out of curiosity that had been helping to follow my heart and my love, I decided to find or build up the feeling of being at home.
First, it started with… levee. The smell of wet sand and rush water of Mississippi, the pattern of willow trees and trumpet vines, taste of wild blackberries along the river and mulberries from the tree near the horse stable and colorful houses on piers. Those smells and tastes like a hypersonic train made me travel back in time to my childhood, to the cabins my father Ivan rented on Dnipro River to fish for pikes and zanders. I could hear the tiny copper bells on fishing rods and see his joyful smile, maybe because since he died thirty years ago, he is always around. And I felt safety.
Levee became an umbilical cord connecting me with “known and safe space like home” placenta, providing oxygen from wind of changes and removing wastes of worries and reminiscences.
I started to plant roses, oleander, jasmine, hibiscus and crape myrtle around my house as if I was trying to root myself from the vase to the clay of Louisiana. Plants rooted fast.
I felt the urge to root fast too, for my daughter and my husband. But it’s not so easy, because immigration should go through all stages of grief. So, I grabbed that umbilical cord with levee tight and as an astronaut in open space started to explore.
And then The Breads On Oak and High Vintage store happened. Sitting on the porch, wearing an unusual dress after years of black suits and tactical gear, tasting the loaf of bread with unsalted butter, grasping the hot air, I went to the senses of Alice in Wonderland, who discovered herself in a new world and was getting bigger or smaller, trying to adjust. The dress fitted me well. But did I fit the dress?
Ally smiled to me from Vino Fine Wine. Does she know how many times her warm hospitality will help me to do better during my not the best days?!
Or my neighbor Mrs. Cony and her motherly warm welcoming hugs.
And then Z’otz Cafe and Blue Cypress Books happened. I found places to hide and restore, to touch, to smell, to read the book and absorb the text. To be around people without interactions was a good start for my introvert side. That’s when I met ANTIGRAVITY. It made me smile and forget about the time. It was so easy to befriend the person behind each text. To play those inner dialogs with less language barrier, with less social anxiety, with growing feeling to use that door and leave the vase and go explore more places and people.
And food. When it rains, it pours. Po-Boy Fest, Aguasanta, Juan’s Flying Burrito, Oak & Ale, crawfish season with smells of crawfish etouffee and jambalaya on the streets, gumbo, fried redfish and baked oysters. Believe me or not, but the water I drank and the food I ate made my roots sprout even faster. To the moment I caught myself standing in Eglantine Rose Letterpress choosing the font for an address here to be printed on envelopes.
My heart started to open faster, and I discovered the special place in it for my New Orleans life. Meeting more people or every small talk with Ally and Milton, travels around the state—showed me something very important. That it’s not just levee, it’s all the place—like that umbilical cord, the bond and connection to my sweet childhood, my home.
Ukraine is in the east south of Europe. And we are rather Southern souls than Nordic. During lunch we talk about plans for dinner. About how good or bad the harvest of apricots, cherries, watermelons and strawberries would be. We do love homemade wine and cheese. To sing together after a few glasses. To dance after dinner while kids sleep in chairs. To enjoy time with families playing cards, dice and board games. To have festivals and fresh markets. To run on emotions and feelings, laughing and talking loudly with quite a lot of gestures. To ride horses, to grow peppers, to go fishing with father. To be crazy in love and stay connected with community. To have art gallery or bar crawling nights. To cook a lot and share the food with friends and neighbors. And to eat it till gastro coma.
Our cuisine is not just borsch, holubtsi (cabbage rolls), kholodets (meat jelly) and varenyky. Our main street food is Shawarma, Çibörek and buns. At home we also cook pilaf, shashlyk (shish kebab), mămăligă (like polenta), souvlaki (chicken on skewers), chicken tapaka, forshmak (smashed herring appetizer), gefiltefish (stuffed fish) etc.
We mixed the cultures and cuisines with Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Jews, Moldovans, Romanians, Polishes, Georgians, Armenians and others. We mixed languages, traditions and songs and melted together in one pot to something I can’t describe. But it feels like New Orleans, where cultures blended so well together, that it turned out to be a phenomenon of co-appreciation.
Since full-scale invasion happened, we started to live on the edges of scale minus ten/plus ten. When you are not just drinking any coffee in the morning after the night of sheltering from missiles.
On the way to work or nail appointment, funerals or baby showers, first you go to your favorite place to enjoy coffee. For me it was Sütlü kahve—Crimean Tatar strong coffee with milk slowly brewed without water in cezve. And that coffee is ten out of ten. Mostly because the morning came and life goes on.
On my other travels out of Ukraine no matter where I would go, I would feel numbness of all senses. When no matter what I do, eat, drink, read, kiss, hug, I will feel almost nothing. And I can’t even tell, are those people living life without war enjoying little things?
But not in New Orleans. I don’t know what historically this place and people went through. But I know for sure that to enjoy life like New Orleans does, it went through a lot.
So, thank you ANTIGRAVITY, to every page I read and every author behind the text I felt. To slowly and safely move my attention from grief to acceptance of this new life in New Orleans, that is worth celebrating.
With love,
Katya Tete
illustration by Laura Frizzell
