A Journey Not Planned

I am a huge planner. In college, I had mapped out what my future was going to look like. I planned on graduating, immediately finding a teaching job, marrying my college sweetheart after a year of working, starting a family a year of being married, and raising my children. My plan was on course until we tried to start our family. After five years of trying and going to a fertility specialist, I finally had my baby in my arms. A year and a half later when my baby stopped talking and wouldn’t respond to his name, my life changed. I didn’t need an evaluation or a diagnosis to know things were going to be different than planned. Our days filled with play dates, adventures to the park, and no set schedule were soon replaced by therapy sessions, evaluations, and extra practice at home. The best way I can describe the feeling is in this essay.

 

WELCOME TO HOLLAND    

By Emily Perl Kingsley (a mother of a son with Down Syndrome)  c1987

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.

 

Everyday my children are showing great improvement, and one day we might make it to “Italy”. For now, we are in “Holland” and are doing great! We have met some of the most incredible people here that have changed our lives. We wouldn’t have met them if we would have stayed on course like planned.

In the past years, I have learned that life doesn’t always follow our plans, but we can still find joy and blessings in our new journey. I hope that this essay brought you comfort and encouragement like it did to me.