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
wonderful plans. The Colosseum, Michalangelo's David, the gondolas in
Venice. You may even 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. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change of 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, 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 Rembrants.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're
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.
