Holland

I've been preparing to share about Mia at Bakersfield Christian High School in October. As a result, I've found myself going through old emails that were sent out by our dear friends, the Norsworthy's, during those first few weeks. In one of those was a beautiful piece that my sister-in-law Rachel found about a woman named Emily Kingsley who had a child with Down Syndrome. Let me share this with you.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. 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 the pain of that 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.


Just this morning I was thinking about how I've been blessed in such a different way than other Mommys. Many mommys don't realize exactly what it entails to go from crawling to walking, it's quite a process. I would have never known these tiny intricacies of development if we hadn't landed in Holland...like that you first pull to stand and get down by falling on your bottom, but then learn to get down using one knee. I've been able to find so much joy in Mia's progress with these tiny details. Some days are still hard, I would be lying to you if I said I never wanted to be in Italy, but I'm learning to appreciate Holland. More so, I think most days I love being in Holland, in all of its differentness, it is truly beautiful.