Splendid Mayhem: A Disaster Area

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.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A Disaster Area

Do you ever feel like your house is trashed, or is it just me? While I posted the 'post' below, my wonderful children who only take care of their toys and never make messes (HAHAHA) opened a bulk package of spaghetti noodles and orange crackers. I'd already mopped this morning (briefly) after Parker picked up a glass of pina colada (however you spell that) and broke it. Sticky mess everywhere. (I know you sometimes leave your glass sitting on the coffee table and just go to bed too.... just agree and make me feel better) So, today I've mopped my kitchen (on hands and knees b/c I think mops are nasty... weird quirk) 3 times.

If anytime in the next, uh 15 weeks, you decide to come to my house- just look at the walls and not the floor full of toys or the huge mound of clean laundry sitting in the chair just waiting for somebody to put it away. I apologize now.. b/c as the semester rolls on I don't think it's guna get any easier. Week 2 and I already have a quiz everyday.

2 comments:

KieraSeptember 2, 2008 at 10:20 PM
Jess -- I took Friday afternoon off just to clean because I was feeling the same way and I knew I would be overwhelmed with being a Mommy, the full time job, classwork & therapy sessions this fall.

I feel your pain!
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Popcorn HouseSeptember 3, 2008 at 11:26 AM
Hugs hun. Since I am home all the time, it isn't so bad for me. Unless something unexpected happens like a flooded laundry room, then I go CRAZY!!!
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