Tulips

Laik....5 days old.  My life was forever changed and blessed!!

Emily Perl Kingsley is the mother of a son with Down Syndrome.  Below is an essay she composed in  1987.  It tells the story of  how  one feels when delivery day arrives and the plan has changed. 


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.




There were several individuals that told me of this story before I actually read it in entirety.  After reading it just one time, my heart was opened.  It was refreshing to know that I wasn't the only new mom to feel the loss of a dream. 

I will say, this life we are now living is different from what I had planned, but Laik has made me a better person.  I believe I am more patient, more understanding, more gentle and more aware of what the "big picture" is all about.  I'm learning to enjoy the view from where God has placed me.  This gift from God, made especially for me, has fulfilled an emptiness that was in my heart.  Laik is certain to take me places I never thought I would go, but no matter what, being with him will make the trip delightful!

....and I love tulips!! Maybe Holland was my destination all along. 

Laik at Mimi and Popa's just before Easter.