Our Babies

Our Babies
Luke and Claire

"Welcome to Holland"

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. 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.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Happy Memorial Day

Hope everyone is having a happy, relaxing weekend. Friday night we spent the evening on a sunset cruise out on Cross Lake with our neighbors. It was so relaxing, in fact, that Luke slept the entire time! It's still a little too early to have Luke out in the heat because otherwise, we'd spend the entire weekend out there because the weather is PERFECT! Yesterday we went to a couple of BBQs to celebrate the holiday weekend. But, nothing beats the excitement of today.....Grandpa & Grandma Malone and Crazy Uncle Mike get here!!!!! My mom has already met Luke; however, my dad and brother have only seen him via the blog and web cam. So, for you picture lovers out there, get excited for TONS of pictures from the upcoming week. Time to go clean the house and go grocery shopping...

2 comments:

  1. The ScottsMay 31, 2010 at 5:27 PM

    Yay for Luke meeting the family! Can't wait to see all the pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stacy RomanJune 2, 2010 at 1:59 PM

    It's funny...we passed Lake Havasu, AZ on our way out here and we both thought of you guys. I told Mark that I bet you guys were out on the lake! :) So glad that everything seems to be looking up! Big hugs!

    ReplyDelete

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