How is the best way to describe my life now and how it might have been. I want to share this poem with you that I found.
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 some of that
pain 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!
I've heard this one before, from a friend who has a down's syndrome child among her very large family. It's a good way to explain things.
ReplyDeleteI just liked how descriptive and how well it explains different life's and there is so much joy in both. Thanks for your comment.
Delete