Welcome to Holland

A few hours after Alice was born, a doctor in the hospital handed me a sheet of a paper with a story on it.  The story was called “Welcome to Holland.”  I don’t even think the doctor explained anything.  He just gave me the paper.  I glanced at it for a second and then dismissed it.  I was in such a fog at the time that I don't think I could really process it.

A few weeks after we got home, I found the piece of paper again.  I read it and started crying.  Oh, how accurate this amazing story is.  Here it is:

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with Down syndrome... 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 to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans... the Coliseum, Michelangelo’s David, the gondolas of 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.”

The stewardess replies, "There's been a change in the flight plan. We've landed in Holland and it is here 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 and buy new guidebooks. You must learn a whole new language. You will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met otherwise. It's just a different place. It is slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy... but after you have been there awhile 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 talking 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."

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 go to Italy… you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things… about Holland. 

So... we are now in Holland and it is here we must stay.  But Holland is the absolute perfect place for us—and our tour guide is sooooo freaking cute.