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, October 10, 2010

Lazy Weekend


What a fabulous weekend! Patrick had 2 whole days off work, and it was sensational. The last time we spent this much time together as a family was back in June before Weapons School. Although it's no fun being apart so much, this has been an amazing opportunity for Patrick, AND we have less than two months left! 

On Fridays I usually head to Fast Eddies, my favorite local dive, to hang out with my co-workers until it's time to pick up Luke, but the poor little guy had a rough week and wasn't feeling the greatest. It was okay because we were both super tired. In fact, Patrick got home by 7, and we were all asleep within the next two hours. Then, after I finished a school project, we enjoyed the gorgeous fall weather on Saturday out on the lake.  Afterward, we stopped to celebrate William's 4th birthday party, and then Luke went to his first concert - Sister Hazel.  Well, we're not sure if we can officially say it was his first concert because he slept the entire time, but we'll pretend.  Patrick worked for a bit on Sunday, but we managed to do our fall decorating.  Luke snuggled with MonkMonk while we looked for decorating ideas from other houses in the neighborhood.  





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