Welcome To Holland
by
Emily Perl Kingsley
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 yourbags
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 many never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things
... about Holland.
(C) 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved
(Emily was/is a writer for Sesame Street. Used with permission.)