Welcome to Holland: Guess where?

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.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Guess where?

So right after school got out, we skipped town again! We made a little detour this time though. I dropped Will off at my parents house in Arizona and my mom and I headed to their house in San Diego! It was so much fun! It’s kind of interesting staying at their house in Arizona because its not finished yet so it’s like camping… you have to cook all of your food in the barbeque grill out side or go out to eat. Only one bathroom works and no furniture, except for the random chairs and couches down stairs and in the “hang out” by the kitchen. I don’t even know what to call it because it was an outdoor patio before. Lots of changes in their house but very cool. (when it is finished) My boys love it, of course. They love going on desert hikes with Grandpa and riding the four wheelers. They love camping! What boy doesn’t? I love going home. This is the home I grew up in so of course I love to go back home.

In San Diego, mom and I took the boys back to Old Town because it was so fun and we didn’t go to the Mormon Battalion Museum last time we went. We really wanted to see that and it was definitely worth seeing!