Family Friday: Welcome to Holland

I originally posted this on my blog back in November of 2008. My nickname for Tony back then was "Shorty" and he would have been 1 year old at the time. I now want to rededicate it to both our boys who have shown us that Holland is a lot more fun than where we thought we were going with the adoption of special needs boys!

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

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 guidebooks. 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.

(I, Heidi, personally don't agree with this line.)

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.

Thank you, Tony and Noah, we don't regret a moment!