by
Emily Perl Kingsley
© 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.
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 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 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.
Thanks for the repost. Sometimes we need reminding.
well, have to go, can't see for the tears. I've read this before, I cry every time. Today my son said, "Mama, I'm darn cute, aren't I!" Well, he is. And the world is a better place because he is in it.
I'm sure some of you may remember Bob "Bobcat" Goldthwait the zany, spasmatic comic from the Police Academy movies.
Although he's an unabashed liberal ("I'm a leftwing lunatic...don't applaud that...there's a real thin line between comedy and dictatorship) but his jabs were comedy tinged with politics vs. politics tinged with comedy like, say, Al Franken.
The bottomline is that this specific performance in 1987, "Meat Bob", is a liberal performance that a conservative can laugh along with especially after he calms down a little and starts talking about his daughter ("Get in the house. We're gonna watch Police Academy 50. Yes again!) but it was the end that is really pro-life and touching.
After joking about how, with all the drugs he did (he's completely clean even then) chances were he was going to have a garbage pail kid with "eight arms, eight legs, 'Hi dad, I'm Mr. Party'" he ends with this (from memory):
"And everyone would say, 'As long as she's healthy.' And I thought to myself that maybe...if my daughter was sick or retarded that maybe I would have to learn patience and understanding and maybe I would have to stop thinking about my fabulous career. So when people again said 'as long as she's healthy' I said 'You know it doesn't matter...I will love her the way she is...(now the liberal tag) as long as she isn't a yuppy f&*K like you."
Just a couple other liberal bits that I still think are funny:
On guns in the house -
"...and you do need to protect yourself sometimes but the statistics are that if you have a gun in the house you are either gonna get shot with it by someone who breaks in or get liquored up and kill Mom. 'That's the worst meatloaf I've ever had in my life, Lady!'
On Reagan -
"So the airtarffic controllers went on strike and Reagan said 'I can fix this. Everyone on strike - you're fired!' So they just hired anyone hanging out at the time. There's like janitors and those hiring are like 'So have you ever played space invaders or something like that?'
"I can't blame Reagan for everything. Blaming Ronald Reagan for the way things are is like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger. Neither of them run the company."
On rock music and suicide -
"So stupid 'My son listened to Ozzy Osbourne and then killed himself.' Well maybe your divorce and being on heroin might have something to do with it."
"...and we're really excited about the album because the record company thinks it will probably go...vinyl."
Any how he does go for the jugular and does cuss but overall he comes across as the liberal he is but there tend to be quite a few pleasant surprises especially the touching ending.