About Holland...

The Emily Perl Kingsley poem "Welcome to Holland" has been a fixture in my classroom since the beginning of my teaching career. It is a poem I have shared with staff and parents over the years, and I think it speaks beautifully to the unique experience of parents of children with disabilities as they learn to navigate a world that is not less than but simply different from the world of parenthood they had envisioned.  

 

Here it is: 

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

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.

My sweet friend, J., posted on Facebook about a "Holland day" she had last week...a friend of hers, K., posted a response that I have to share: 

"Holland" is actually one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I mean that literally and figuratively. It is frustrating but just remember while "Italy" looks like it has it all together, "Italy" has it's stuff too... Crazy drivers, everyone smokes, and the annoying vespas everywhere. Plus, eventually they'll all feel the effects of all that pasta sooner or later. What I'm saying here is, those of us that were sent to Holland, it was most likely because the Master Tour Guide knew we'd be the ones that could appreciate "Holland" the way it deserves.

True. Story.