by Emily Pearl 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 are 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 statue of Michelangelo's David, the
gondolas of Venice... You may learn some handy phrases
in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After all the 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 has been a change in flight plan. They've
landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to
some horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of
pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different
place. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And
you must learn a new language. And you will meet a
whole new group of people you would never have met
otherwise.

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 catch your breath, you look
around and you begin to notice that Holland has
windmills; Holland has tulips; Holland even has
Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from
Italy; and they are all bragging about the 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." The pain of that will
never, ever go away because the loss of that dream is
a 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.

 

@>~~