Holland

Just a day or two after having Trevor, my mom was visiting at the hospital. She pulled some papers out of her purse and handed them to me, saying that she'd remembered this story and thought I should read it; it was called "Welcome to Holland."

This little story is the thing I was talking about in my last post that I purposely omitted; it is so special to me that I thought it deserved it's own blog post :) This literary treasure is loved by so many people who care for someone with special needs. I think it pretty clearly describes how we feel upon learning that things will be different than we imagined. The author, Emily Perl Kingsley, actually wrote this essay in 1987, about her son, who was born with Down Syndrome. How I wish I had known about this on December 1, 2014 when we were told about the 4% chance! But I am so grateful I have it now :) I still read it every so often and probably will for the rest of my life.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley

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. It's like this...

"When you're 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 stewardess 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's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is 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 guidebooks. 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 a while 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's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, 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 very special, the very lovely things ...about Holland."

We have the cutest tour guide for our adventures in Holland! And we feel pretty darn lucky to be tourists because it really is beautiful here!