Welcome to Holland

For as long as I can remember I had an idea of what life was going to be like when I grew up.  In my mind I was going to marry a specific kind of man who had a fabulous job and we were going to live by my family and have so many children by a certain age...  I had it all planned out and it was going to be perfect.

Not one of those unimportant things came true.  But all of the fine print, the stuff that really makes life sweet, the stuff that matters... I have that.

No I didn't get the, quote, perfect {by the worlds standards} child.  What I have is better.  Wyatt doesn't just bless my life every day, he enriches it.  I believe that just by having him I am a better person.  Because I have him I have an amazing opportunity in front of me.  I get to meet people that I never would have otherwise met.  I get to learn and help inform others of a skin condition that is practically unheard of.  But I digress.

I'll admit that as the mother of a child with a disability, life hasn't turned out as I expected it to.  And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

A friend of mine shared the following essay with me and I was so touched by it that I feel the need to pass it on.  I can relate perfectly to it and don't think there is a more beautiful way this could have been said.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by: Emily Perl 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 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.

I wouldn't trade this trip to Holland for all the Paris' in the world.