WELCOME TO HOLLAND
 by Emily Pearl Kingsley

        I am often asked to  describe the experience of raising a child with a disability. . .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 guidebooks and make your wonderful plans.   The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice.  You may learn some handy phrases  in Italian. . .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 come in and says "Welcome to Holland."

        Holland?!? you say.  What do you mean Holland?  I signed up for 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 yoou would have never met.

        It's just a different place.  It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.  But after you've  been there a while and you 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'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.'

        But if you spend the rest of 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."


< Sorry if there are punctuation or other differences from the original, I am copying someone else's retype.  Chanita>