WELCOME TO HOLLAND
Emily Perl Kingsley
Emily Perl Kingsley
When you're going to have a baby,
it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy several guide
books and make all your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The
Gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all a
very exciting time.
After months of eager anticipation,
the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours
later, the plane lands and the pilot announces, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?" you say. "What do you mean Holland? We signed up for Italy. We are supposed to be in Italy. All our lives we've dreamed of going to Italy."
There was a change in the flight plan. You've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The very important thing to remember is that you haven’t landed in a bad place, it's just a different place. There has been a change in plans for you.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would not have met in Italy.
Holland is slower-paced than Italy, less flashy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath and you look around, you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland has Rembrandts.
A lot of people you know are busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all talking about what a wonderful time they had. And for awhile, from time to time, you may say, "Yes, that's where we were supposed to go. That's what we had planned." The loss of that dream can be a significant loss.
But, if you spend too much time mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely, the very beautiful and perfect things ... about Holland.
lovely...
ReplyDeleteso true! can't wait to meet the twins. love nicole and alicianna
ReplyDeleteEmily Kingsley's son was born with Down syndrome. She wrote this to illustrate her journey of discovery with his birth. Emily wrote for Sesame Street and her son was frequently on the show as a small child. When my daughter Kinney was born with DS, we went to the national convention in Anaheim. Kinney was 10 weeks old and I walked into a hotel filled with 2,500 people that were all "relatives". I remember speaking with a woman on the second day who asked me how I was faring and I told her that analogy. She began to cry and I was mortified that I had said something that would cause that reaction. It turns out I was speaking with Emily Kingsley and she had been transported back to the birth of her son and the roiling emotions that came with it.
ReplyDeleteLater, when Kinney was about 12 months old, my Dad gave me this same article. He was always so incredible with my sweet girl and never ever saw her different ability, only her. He is ogne and Kinney will be 19 on the 21st of June. I don't buy the sentiment that God "chose" us to be her parents because that would mean He chose for her to - well let's just say, you get getting with what is in front of you, buoyed by the love you hold for those two beautiful babies. I saw a movie recently where one of the leads said, "It will be alright in the end. If it isn't all right, then it isn't the end."
Perfect.