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.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Oh Monday Morning....

Patrick and I know we are extremely spoiled parents. Both of our children are EXCELLENT sleepers, but that doesn't mean we don't get a bit tired every once in a while. It was my job to get Luke ready for school yesterday morning, and everything was going great until I couldn't find one of his shoes. We looked everywhere, and I do mean EVERYWHERE....under all furniture...in the trash...in the toybox....in the tree house, and no luck. Fortunately, I found one pair of backup shoes that Luke could wear even though he couldn't wear his foot braces as well. Whatever. It was better than explaining to his teachers why he was barefoot. As I was making one last frantic sweep of the house, I hear Patrick laughing hysterically in the kitchen. When he took Luke out of his highchair, he noticed Luke's jeans weren't buttoned. He couldn't figure out why the pants seemed so tight until he reached in and pulled out the phantom other shoe!!!! Notice the frightened look on Luke's face. Can you blame him for wondering about his parents? I can't.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)