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.
ping
When times are tough, keep in mind that you still, at any time you wish, can walk into your child's bedroom and look at him, touch him, talk to him.
We are dealing with the death of one of our children. Whenever you think you have been perhaps robbed of a healthy child, or a normal child, consider yourself so blessed that you still have him.
Again, both of your posts were very beautiful. I'm glad your children were conceived by you two instead of some enlightened pro-choice freak who would have eliminated your precious children in the name of "it's best for the child".
I envy both of you more than you know.
As the parent of a beautiful girl who has Turner
Syndrome ... the “Holland” metaphor is perfect!
What a lovely way to put it.
When the daughter of a friend of mine had her first child, she was Down's Syndrome. When someone else told me, my first reaction was that my friend must be so disappointed. It wasn't that I didn't think the child was a gift, and would most certainly be welcomed into the family, but that, as you said, they'd planned their lives differently, and would have to make some big changes, and their lives would go in a different direction.
That little girl is SO loved by her family, and she's growing to be a lovely and smart big sister to her little brother, Jack.
Great post. Thanks.
I will always remember this as one of my favorite posts.
Beautiful.
Brillant.