Splendid Mayhem: Welcome Home!

Welcome To Holland

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.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Welcome Home!

We got in Saturday night around 10:30ish (pm), we walked in to (after being in the van since 8am):
* Lightbulbs unscrewed
* Doll head, and boots stuffed in our bed (the 'doll' is what Ann practiced hair with, she's a stylist- and VERY good... if you need her #)
* Jim on the side table
* The Matress and box springs switched (mat on bottom, box springs on top)
*And, as I go to SIT on the toilet, I find brown smeared stuff and a chunk of stuff in the pot. I later learned it was Reese's PB Cup, not poop

We have some terrific friends who 'house & fish sat' for us. All we can say is~ hehehe you just wait til we watch your house!!! :) (and, nah we aren't mad, we thought it was pretty funny--- but, we know where you sleep! LOL) Yea, I had Adam hide the doll head. I'd end up waking up and see it and freak out thinking it was a real person or The Bride of Chuckie was out to get me. No joke, I'm freaky that way- I don't do scary!