The Strange Blessing That Brought Me Home


After Hurricane Katrina, Robin Baudier moved back to New Orleans to be with her family. She believes the experience of living in a FEMA trailer and helping rebuild her parents' home is a blessing.

From NPR News. This is weekend edition. I’m Liane Hansen.

I believe in mystery.
I believe in family.
I believe in being who I am.
I believe in the power of failure.
And I believe normal life is extraordinary.
This I Believe.

Today’s This I Believe essay began its life one year ago as a journal entry. Its writer Robin Baudier later sent it to us. Baudier is a 25-year-old graduate of Tulane University. She and her extended family live in New Orleans. Here’s our series curator, independent producer, Jay Allison.

When Robin Baudier wrote her essay last year, she was living in a FEMA trailer with her family. One night in September 2006 she began to write in the present tense, trying to capture her contradictory feelings and see if they added up to a belief. When we recorded her recently reading this essay, she said the feeling of that time came right back to her. And although her circumstances have changed somewhat, her belief hasn’t. Here is Robin Baudier with her essay for This I Believe.

I believe in strange blessings. I’ve never been in such good shape. I’ve never spent so much time outside. I caught the last three sunsets in a row and unless I’m mistaken, I’ll catch the one tonight. I’ve never felt so close to my family. I’ve never felt so sure that I was doing everything right. I lived in a FEMA trailer with my parents, I've moved home from L.A February before last, quitting the job it had taken me almost a year of miserable internships to get, to make sure firsthand that my family was okey.

Now I work on my dad’s house on the weekends and at his dental laboratory during the week. Shutting the curtain on the bunk bed area doesn't always cut it for privacy, so I spend a lot of time outside exercising the dog, and just try to get away from people. I take her out on the levee and run to get rid of all my frustration with not being able to have a job that will allow me to afford rent. I run to get out when I have been stuck inside, reading to escape from life, not even able to sit up straight in my tiny bunk. I run to feel like I am doing something when I am overwhelmed by all the things I can’t do anything about.

The reason I caught the sunset yesterday is that we have been waiting for two weeks for FEMA to come to fix the leak in our plumbing. I was so frustrated with running out in a towel to turn the water off then, mopping up the floor with their rotating assortment of towels that we have hung outside the trailer that I decided to put on my bathing suit and shampoo under the hose. But God, that was a beautiful sunset last night!

I know it might sound strange that I am indirectly describing Hurricane Katrina as a blessing since it took my family's home and the covering from it has taken over our lives. But I love my awful life so much right now that I find it hilarious when I am unable to convince anyone else of it

I make less than the people working at Popeye's. I repeatedly have to suffer the indignity of telling people that I live with my parents. But I have finally gotten rid of back pain that the doctors always told me was from stress. I occasionally have weekends when I realize that I am building a house with my dad, which I used to dream about when I was six and watching Bob Villa with him. And I am back where I belong. No longer kidding myself that there is anywhere else I want to be. I believe in strange blessings because taking away my house, brought me home.

Robin Baudier with her essay for This I Believe, originally written as a diary entry one year ago. Baudier’s family still lives in the FEMA trailer. She has found an apartment in New Orleans and continues to work as a dental technician for her father. The whole family is working together to rebuild their house in New Orleans hoping to be done by Christmas. Baudier says that by New Orleans' standards, she and her family are the lucky ones.

Everyone is invited to write for our series at npr.org/thisibelieve. You can find out more and read what thousands of others have written. For This I Believe. I’m Jay Allison.

Next week on npr.org, a This I Believe essay from listener T. Susan Chang of Leverett, Massachusetts, on her belief in the analog world. This I Believe is independently produced by Jay Allison, Dan Gediman, John Gregory and Viki Merrick. Support for This I Believe comes from Prudential Retirement.