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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 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.
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©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the
author. |
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