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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 13, 2011

More Flippy Floppies

So this weekend, we really meant to go out to the lake.  Saturday we went to the Parade of Homes and then Sunday we were going to the Lake.  Well, long story short, we didn't go to the lake so we could clean, go to Target, and finish up the last day of the Parade of Homes.

Don't judge us about the Parade of Homes!  We don't bother with the houses that we could actually afford.  We go for the $500K and above.  You know, from the "within our reach sooner or later" to "we better win the lottery twice to afford this crap!".  It was a good time and our house really needed to be cleaned.

So long story short, we left work early (just a little bit) and went out to the lake armed with a few beers, some sandwiches, cheetoes, and some mac and cheese for Luke.


Luke having a bit of fun pre-Mac and Queso and Turkey.
Then we got brave.  We got Luke into his life jacket, I went into the water and Melissa handed him to me.  At first I stayed by the ladder and he seemed alright with the whole proposition, leaning towards the "not liking this" side.  

You better not let go of me dad!
Then I wanted to see if he was cool with me going away from the boat.  He seemed to be calming down, but even if we were looking at each other, I'm not sure he was totally ok with what we were doing...

So we brought him in.  He wasn't screaming ever, just not real comfortable.  I think the more we take him in there he will like it.  It was nice and warm, so that probably helps.  Hopefully, things will go a bit better next time!

2 comments:

  1. The ScottsJune 14, 2011 at 3:14 PM

    Love that you got him in the lake! Now if we can just all go camping on a lake together...

    ReplyDelete
  2. KathyJune 30, 2011 at 12:15 AM

    I love it! My girls love jumping off the boat!!

    ReplyDelete

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