July 2011 – A Trip to Holland

We received an email from my sister-in-law a few days after receiving this news… It was titled “Trip to Holland”

A Trip 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 Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in

Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several 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 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 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. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And

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 experience will

never, ever, ever, go away. The loss of that dream is a 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.