31 for 21: Day 1 - Welcome To Holland

For my first post I would like to share, "The Welcome To Holland" poem by Emily Perl Kingsley. I found it very inspiring an comforting in those early days. I remember walking down the hallway leaving the NICU, the day after we found out Kayde had Down Syndrome, Feeling so numb an lost an unsure about the future. On the wall was a message board for parents about NICU/Premmie Support Groups, Life,Care and Info and then there it was. I stood there crying an reading it over an over. An she couldn't have explained it any better.

Welcome To Holland
    
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 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,
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 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.
 
© 1987, by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the author.



 He is my Holland!!!