Welcome
to Holland!
I
am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with
a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that
unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.
Well, it’s like this…
When you are
going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous
vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and
make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David.
The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.
It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation
the day finally arrives. You pack your bags, and off you go. Several
hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome
to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say, “What do you mean Holland?
I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my
life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there has been
a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland, and
there you must stay.
The important
thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible
disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease.
It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new
guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will
meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s
just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less
flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for awhile and
you catch your breath, you look around… and you begin to notice
that Holland has windmills…and Holland has tulips. Holland
even has Rembrandts.
But everyone
you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and
they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.
And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that is
where I was supposed to go. That’s what I planned.”
And the pain
of that will never, ever go away…because the
loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But…if
you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to
Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the special, the very lovely
things…about Holland.
Source: Emily
Perie Kingsley From a Reprint in “Family Resource
Committee” Newsletter
