We had gotten the keys for a house the previous May and spent weekends moving stuff up to the house while Billy finished his year at school and I finished off my last year driving a school bus for that particular company, as the commute of an hour and a half one way didn't make it worth the trip for a part time job. I don't remember ever subscribing to the daily newspaper in the area where we had moved to. Maybe just the Sunday paper because of the magazines, the retail flyers, and the tv guide they printed up themselves. Either the Saturday or Sunday paper. Don't remember now which one.
But out of the paper this particular time, came a Dear Abby column that I clipped and stuck to my fridge with magnets. And when I moved, it moved with me. Until it so badly discolored over the passing of years, I took it down and put it away. I had thought to blog it before, but think I could remember where I put it ? No. It wasn't until I was spring cleaning in a big way recently and going through every little scrap of paper, every little piece of this and that, that I found it again.
So, with full credit going to Dear Abby herself and Emily Pearl Kingsley, I repeat it here for you.
Dear Abby
Give thanks for children
Dear Readers:
October has traditionally been Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and has been so declared by the U.S. Congress.
Because I have so often heard from parents or grandparents of babies born with various disabilities, I offer the following, which has become a favorite:
WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Pearl 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 guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Michaelangelo's 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 diseases. 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, 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 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.
