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, September 11, 2016

An earthquake, a baptism, and a wedding

This morning, Luke trotted downstairs at 6:45 wearing shoes with his pajamas.  "Hi mom! Shoes on. Blue car now?" he asked, pointing at the garage. A true Godinez child - always expecting an adventure.  Although we're disappointing him this weekend with a quiet weekend at home, we're all still in recovery mode after our epic adventures last weekend with an earthquake, a baptism, and a wedding.

We knew the weekend would be nutty, but thankfully, the kiddos were as good as gold (minus a few meltdowns in the car - by them, not me). Luke does tend to go a little crazy from all of the attention, so Saturday morning around 7:00 am, when suddenly everything in the room started making noise, we assumed it was Luke upstairs trying to do something to get attention. Then, we realized that the wall and bed were moving, and Patrick finally put it all together - "We're having an earthquake." Can we not have just one boring trip to Kansas?

Soon, it was time for round one of family festivities: Aubrey's baptism. As we were starting, the priest looked around the room and said, "This is a lot of people." Oh, it isn't normal to bring 40 people to a baby's baptism? Weird. Back when Luke was born an spent some time in NICU, we decided to have a large fiesta for family and friends to meet the little dude.  Because grandparents are far more fair than parents, it was only natural that Claire and now Aubrey would be welcomed to the craziness of our family with a Mexican fiesta with all of our family and friends.

Aubrey and her godparents - Mike and Blake

                                             
 After brunch with the Malone clan, it was was time to celebrate Jeff and Tricia's wedding.  The wedding was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the DJ was excellent. Luke, Claire, and Aubrey never left the dance floor.  They boogied with friends and family the entire night, while I prayed they would be so exhausted that they wouldn't notice the three hour drive later that night to OKC.  To end the festivities, Tricia and Jeff bought lanterns for everyone to light and release. Obviously, they underestimated the abilities of their friends and family - after almost lighting the grass, a few trees, and each other on fire - the lanterns finally launched, and it was our cue to head south.
Although the distance between San Antonio and Wichita is less than ideal, nothing beats these trips home.  Truly, nothing is better than being with friends and family and seeing Luke, Claire, and Aubrey form the relationships with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that Patrick and I were so lucky to grow up with.

In the words of Luke, "Shoes on. Blue car now?" We are always ready for an adventure, so, until the next one.....

Congrats Tricia and Jeff, and thank you to everyone who made time to celebrate Aubrey's baptism.

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