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.

Monday, June 21, 2010

There's No Place Like Home - Part II

What a wonderful weekend dear readers!  It started with a sunny drive home down the turnpike to my parent's house, which brought back memories driving home from KU.  Once we got there and emptied the car, Grandma Godinez wouldn't even let Luke touch any surface unless he was in her arms!  She loves that baby!  It was nice since we had to get ready to go to church for Luke's first swimming lesson (aka baptism).  There were lots of people, which surprised Grandpa Malone.  There was another baby getting baptized at the same time, but the poor kid only had like 6 people.  We kind of overwhelmed them!

This was a picture of the family.  Tricia almost missed the picture since she was trying to get her blood pressure taken.  I asked if her blood pressure was high, because waiting on her sure raised mine!


Here you see the Malone family and me posing.  It was all I could do to smile.  I was hotter than...well I was going to make an inappropriate joke here like I usually do, but I'll get in trouble.  

Ah, Mrs Dot Stegman.  She wasn't so much an English/Journalism teacher as she was a mentor to us both.  We were both very glad that she was able to come to the fiesta after the baptism.  She still has our wedding picture up in her classroom!  That makes me smile a lot!  (That one was for your Mrs. Stegman!)


This morning we finished up cleaning up the back yard and Grandpa Godinez took a timeout with the Little Chucker.  You can see that he is going all "Popeye" on us with the one eye.  They really seem to enjoy each other.  And really, who doesn't enjoy my dad? 

Alright, we are going to put up a big slideshow up soon about the weekend.  So if you have pictures please email them to Melissa and we will be sure to include some of them!

Click here to email Melissa!

3 comments:

  1. Ronnie and SuziJune 21, 2010 at 10:14 PM

    Awesome pictures and update! I will call you back tomorrow Melissa. Can't wait to hear all about it. God Bless Luke!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ronnie and SuziJune 21, 2010 at 10:16 PM

    BTW...your hair looks fantastic!!! (I'm talking Melissa here...not you Patrick!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. TrishJune 22, 2010 at 8:01 AM

    a...lot. oh mrs stegman. good times. i think of her and all her grammatical lessons often!

    (and yes, all lowercase on purpose here!)

    :-)

    ReplyDelete

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