I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a
disability -- to try to help people who have not shared the 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. Michelangelo'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 flight
attendant comes 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 guidebooks. 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.
- WRITTEN BY EMILY PERL KINGSLEY -
Copyright (c) by Rusti since 2002
All Rights Reserved
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